After Planted Evidence In Laptop, Forensics Find Pegasus On Activist Rona Wilson's Phone

The iPhone of activist Rona Wilson, one of the accused in the Elgar Parishad case was infected with NSO Group's spyware Pegasus, in 2018, a new forensic analysis has found.

Wilson, a prisoners' rights activist and academic, was a victim of ¡°surveillance and incriminating document delivery¡± for close to a year before his arrest in June 2018, according to the analysis.

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Digital forensics firm Arsenal Consulting said Wilson's Apple phone was not just selected for surveillance by a client of Israel's NSO Group but was also successfully compromised on many occasions.

The analysis showed that two backups of the iPhone 6s belonging to Wilson had digital traces showing infection by the Pegasus surveillance tool.

?On @washingtonpost, "There's clearly a larger set of activity here,¡± said @juanandres_gs, a principal threat researcher at SentinelOne. The computers examined by @arsenalarmed ¡°aren¡¯t the only machines being compromised by this #threatactor.¡± https://t.co/WRYPPpiFQF

¡ª SentinelOne (@SentinelOne) July 6, 2021

An international consortium of media houses that exposed the misuse of Pegasus by governments had reported that Wilson¡¯s mobile number was included in a leaked database at the heart of the Pegasus Project.

Planted evidence

This is not the first time, allegations of spying and planted evidence have surfaced in the Elgar Parishad case.

In February, Arsenal Consulting had said that the laptop of Wilson, was infected with malware, called NetWire (available for $10 online), which was planted through an email on June 13, 2016, two years before his arrest on Jun 6, 2018.

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The malware was sent to Wilson's laptop from the email id of one of the other accused in the case, Varavara Rao.

Arsenal Consulting, 52 documents were stored in a hidden folder called 'Rbackup' using the malware. The last document was added just a day before Wilson's house was searched and his laptop was seized, on April 17, 2018.

Wilson and 15 other civil rights activists and academics were arrested under the stringent Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) based on letters primarily retrieved from his and co-accused Surendra Gadling's laptop, to claim a conspiracy to kill the Prime Minister and overthrow the government.

In February, Arsenal Consulting's president Mark Stevens had said it was "one of the most serious cases involving evidence tampering¡¯¡¯ that the firm had encountered.

Elgar Parishad is one of the two cases that are related to the Bhima Koregaon incident in 2018.

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Among those arrested in the case, Jesuit priest Stan Swamy who was 84 years old died of ill health in July this year after he was repeatedly denied bail on health grounds or proper treatment until it was too late.

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Poet-activist Varavara Rao, who is 81-year-old was granted interim bail for six months on medical grounds by the Bombay High Court in February.

60-year-old Sudha Bharadwaj was granted bail by the Supreme Court earlier this month after spending three years in jail.

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All the other accused have also repeatedly been denied bail and have been behind bars since 2018.

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