Hundreds of Delhi Congress leaders and workers staged a protest near Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) headquarters on Tuesday, demanding a judicial inquiry into the reported use of Pegasus spyware against journalists and politicians.

The protesters led by Delhi Congress president Anil Kumar marched raising slogans and carrying placards from their party office on DDU Marg to the nearby BJP headquarters. They were stopped at a barricade by the police.

Addressing the protesters, Kumar alleged the government had a role in the snooping row and termed it as a national security threat.

The Congress workers carried placards with slogans such as “BJP now Bharatiya Jasoos Party”.   

Kumar said that Prime Minister Modi and Amit Shah were rattled by Rahul Gandhi’s wide acceptance and popularity across the country and that was the reason they indulged in an illegal activity to snoop on him.

The Congress Delhi unit president said that the fact that ‘Pegasus’ spyware is only sold to government and to no one else points fingers at Modi and Amit Shah about their collusion in using this spy software against political opponents, Union Ministers, security forces, judiciary, journalists and other prominent persons, and it was an inexcusable breach of national security.

An international media consortium on Sunday reported that more than 300 verified mobile phone numbers, including of two serving ministers, over 40 journalists, three opposition leaders and one sitting judge besides scores of business persons and activists in India could have been targeted for hacking through the spyware.

 The central government, however, dismissed allegations of any kind of surveillance on its part on specific people, saying it “has no concrete basis or truth associated with it whatsoever”.