Maharashtra government will probe Digvijaya Singh’s phone-tapping claims

NEW DELHI: Maharashtra Home Minister Anil Deshmukh on Thursday said a probe would be conducted into allegations by senior Congress leader Digvijaya Singh that phones of opposition leaders were tapped by the previous BJP- led Devendra Fadnavis government.nnSingh, in a series of tweets on Thursday, had raised questions about the involvement of officials in this tapping episode.nn”Is the Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray going to give details in public that who was behind snooping and tapping in Maharashtra. Who were the officers of Maharashtra Government who went to Israel to talk to NSO the brain behind malware pegasus,” Singh had tweeted.nnIn October last year, Facebook-owned Whatsapp had said a spyware created by Israel-based NSO Group was used to snoop on 1,400 people worldwide, including 121 users from India.nnDeshmukh said, “He (Singh) has said the software was used to tap mobile phones of leaders from opposition parties and Shiv Sena (which was part of the Fadnavis government at the time) during the Lok Sabha and Assembly elections.”nn”We have taken it seriously and asked for a probe into who had gone to Israel to buy equipment for eavesdropping on conversations of leaders from other parties,” the minister said.nnSena had, after the October Assembly polls, broken away from the BJP and joined hands with the NCP and Congress to form the Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi government led by Uddhav Thackeray.nnSource: Press Trust of India