Not possible in India?

Illegal surveillance is impossible in India, says IT minister Ashwini Vaishnaw. Union Home Minister Amit Shah believes allegations of illegal surveillance have been made to derail India. Typically, PM Narendra Modi has blamed the Congress. Nobody however has been prosecuted or punished for the following:

2009: Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) placed Niira Radia, a PR professional, under surveillance following suspicion that she was a foreign spy. A part of the Radia Tapes got leaked to the media. But she was never prosecuted though she had been under surveillance for 300 days. The tapes are believed to be in CBI’s custody

2012: One lakh phone conversations were retrieved from the police in Himachal Pradesh after Virbhadra Singh government took over. Recording of conversations of politicians and even senior police officers including the DGP were found

2013: Amit Shah, the then home minister of Gujarat, was accused of using an anti-terrorist unit to snoop on a young woman architect and her family members. The state government admitted to the surveillance but claimed it was done following a request to chief minister Narendra Modi by the woman’s father. No order signed by the Home Minister was ever produced and the Gujarat High Court closed the inquiry on the ground that it did not involve public interest.

2014: Allegations that an industrial house was snooping on business rivals and bureaucrats through illegal surveillance were never investigated.

2014-15: Vyapam whistleblowers alleged that a wing of Madhya Pradesh police were using sophisticated and illegal surveillance tools to snoop on even judges. No independent inquiry was allowed.

2019: Facebook owned WhatsApp sued Israeli company NSO that promoted the Pegasus spyware, which, it alleged, had been used to snopp on at least 1,400 WhatsApp users including 121 in India.

2020: WhatsApp chats between deceased film actor Sushant Singh Rajput and his girlfriend and between the girlfriend and alleged drug peddlers surfaced on TV channels. No inquiry was held to ascertain the veracity and the identity of the agencies involved. No questions were asked how the channels got the screen shots.