Anil Ambani is among the potential targets of Israeli spyware Pegasus, as per the updated list of names released on Thursday. 

According to a report by The Wire, the leaked list, analysed by media partners of the Pegasus Project consortium, includes phone numbers that Anil Ambani and one other official of the Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group (ADAG) used. 

“Apart from Ambani, the other company official whose numbers appear on the list include corporate communications chief Tony Jesudasan, as well as Jesudasan’s wife,” the report stated while mentioning that it is not confirmed whether the number is currently being used by Anil Ambani. 

ADAG did not comment on the report immediately.

As per the report, the phone number of Dassault Aviation’s representative in India, Venkata Rao Posina, former Saab India head Inderjit Sial, head of the French firm energy EDF Harmanjit Negi ,and Boeing India boss Pratyush Kumar all appear in the leaked database from 2018 to 2019.

On Sunday, an international media consortium reported that over 300 verified mobile phone numbers, including of two ministers, over 40 journalists, three opposition leaders and one sitting judge apart from many businesspersons and activists in India could have been hacked through the spyware.

The Wire teamed up with 16 other international publications, including the Washington Post, The Guardian and Le Monde, as media partners to an investigation conducted by Paris-based media non-profit organisation Forbidden Stories and rights group Amnesty International. The investigation zeroes in on a leaked database mentioning phone numbers of over 50,000 people that could potentially be targets of surveillance through Pegasus software of Israeli surveillance company NSO Group.

The Indian government and BJP have labelled the Pegasus Project concocted and evidence-less. 

Law and IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said in a statement in Parliament on Thursday that the reports are “an attempt to malign the Indian democracy and its well-established institutions”. His phone number was among the many that were in the list.