Hello,

Last year, government critics and some journalists got a message from Apple that “State-sponsored attackers may be targeting your iPhone.” In another case, incriminating files were remotely placed on the devices owned by anti-caste activists using Pegasus surveillance tool, and were used to target and jail 16 activists associated with Bhima Koregaon.

These were the kind of violations that the Right to Privacy Bill that was being drafted by the previous Manmohan Singh-led government sought to protect Indian citizens from. Though the government changed, Modi, too, had promised Parliament that the bill was still being drafted.

But eventually the Modi government killed the bill and replaced it with a data protection law that didn’t talk about safeguarding privacy. 

The Reporters’ Collective investigation into the government assurance made in Parliament reveals that a ministry for which Prime Minister Narendra Modi holds the portfolio scrapped the Right to Privacy Bill after India’s intelligence agencies sought blanket exemptions from the law.

Part 4 of The Collective’s investigative series Parliament Defied shows that the government, following the intelligence agencies’ demands, quietly worked to kill the assurance to Parliament on bringing in the privacy law. 

Click here to read the story.