In a shocking revelation, it has come to light that a Shenzen-based company named Zhenhua Data Information Technology Co. Limited is monitoring over 10,000 Indian individuals and organisations.
The range of targets in India identified and monitored in real time by Zhenhua Data Information Technology Co. Limited is sweeping — in both breadth and depth.
PM Modi, the Chinese company is also keeping an eye on President Ram Nath Kovind, Congress interim President Sonia Gandhi and their families; Chief Ministers Mamata Banerjee, Ashok Gehlot and Amarinder Singh, Uddhav Thackeray, Naveen Patnaik and Shivraj Singh Chouhan; Cabinet Ministers Rajnath Singh and Ravi Shankar Prasad to Nirmala Sitharaman, Smriti Irani, and Piyush Goyal; Chief of Defence Staff Bipin Singh Rawat to at least 15 former Chiefs of the Army, Navy and Air Force; Chief Justice of India Sharad Bobde and brother judge AM Khanwilkar to Lokpal Justice P C Ghose and Comptroller and Auditor General G C Murmu; start-up tech entrepreneurs like Nipun Mehra, founder of Bharat Pe (an Indian payment app), and Ajay Trehan of AuthBridge, an authentication technology firm, to top industrialists Ratan Tata and Gautam Adani.
Besides the ministers, it has also been learnt that the Chinese firm is monitoring bureaucrats in key positions, judges, scientists and academicians; journalists, actors and sportspersons, religious figures and activists, said the report.
The daily stated that it investigated meta data from Zhenhua’s operations using big-data tools to extract Indian entities from the massive pile of log files that constituted the company’s Overseas Key Information Database (OKIDB). This database uses advanced language, targeting and classification tools to include hundreds of entries without any explicit markers.
