Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad looked outraged as he declared that the government had sought WhatsApp, owned by Facebook, to explain the breach. The Indian Express in the morning had reported that Indian journalists, lawyers and Human Rights activists had been victims of surveillance, presumably by government agencies.

This came to light when WhatsApp sued the NSO Group, which developed the spyware Pegasus to plant malware in smartphones. WhatsApp had first learnt of the malware in May this year, said Facebook which owns WhatsApp, after being alerted by Citizen Lab in Canada. Investigations had proven that the malware had affected at least 1,400 WhatsApp users across 45 countries, including India.

When WhatsApp reacted to Prasad’s outburst by pointing out that it had alerted the Government of India in May, the government spokesmen claimed that the alert was too technical and too full of jargon to be taken seriously. This was followed by WhatsApp replying that it had alerted the Indian government in September as well and had indicated that it had found 121 users in India to have been snooped upon by the spyware.

While the government and WhatsApp engage in a war of words, National Security Adviser Ajit Doval has not uttered a single word on the controversy. The NSA may not be an expert on cyber security but his conspicuous silence on the issue has been baffling. This is not only because of his close relations with both Isreali establishment as well as several kingdoms in the Middle East, which seem to be in the middle of this emerging global scandal.