Inquiry to determine if data of Indian voters and Facebook users was compromised

This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

India’s federal investigating agency will determine whether personal data from Indian voters and Facebook users was compromised by the political consultant company Cambridge Analytica.

The minister of electronics and information technology, Ravi Shankar Prasad, said the Central Bureau of Investigation would look at whether the British company violated Indian laws.

Prasad said in parliament on Thursday that the company denied to the Indian government that data from Indian people was breached, but that contradicted information received from Facebook.

The governing Bharatiya Janata party and the opposition Congress party have accused each other of using Cambridge Analytica’s services, but both have denied any link to it.

Cambridge Analytica declared bankruptcy this year following allegations that it used personal information harvested from 87 million Facebook accounts to help Donald Trump win the 2016 US presidential election.