Several journalists critical of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party-led government, including reporters from the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project and The Wire — as well as the head of a government-linked think tank in New Delhi — also shared similar notices from Apple.

The spyware is sold to governments to fight terrorism. In India, it was used to hack journalists and others.

The flurry of notices, sent by Apple late Monday and early Tuesday, did not name the Indian government as the perpetrator or say whether the hacking attempts were successful. An Apple spokesman clarified that the company “does not attribute the threat notifications to any specific state-sponsored attacker.”

Ashwini Vaishnaw, the BJP minister of railways, communications, electronics and information technology, said on X that the Indian government “takes its role of protecting the privacy and security of all citizens very seriously and will investigate to get to the bottom of these notifications.”

“Much of information by Apple on this issue seems vague and nonspecific in nature,” Vaishnaw said. “Apple states these notifications maybe based on information which is ‘incomplete or imperfect.’ It also states that some Apple threat notifications maybe false alarms or some attacks are not detected.”

But opposition politicians immediately accused the Modi government of snooping and pointed out parallels to 2021, when hundreds of Indian phone numbers were found on a leaked list of potential targets for surveillance by users of Pegasus, a military-grade spyware that can crack Apple and Android smartphones. The list included phone numbers belonging to the opposition leader Rahul Gandhi, journalists and senior bureaucrats and Supreme Court judges.

Phone of Indian activist jailed on terrorism charges was infected with Pegasus spyware, new analysis finds

The Indian government never confirmed or denied its use of Pegasus; its developer, the Israeli firm NSO Group, has said the spyware is sold exclusively to government agencies.

At least one person whose phone was found to be infected by Pegasus in 2021 — the journalist Siddarth Varadarajan, founder of the online news organization The Wire — received notifications from Apple this week that he was being targeted by a state-linked actor. Other Apple users who received the alerts included Mahua Moitra, a member of Parliament from the Trinamool Congress Party, Priyanka Chaturvedi, a leader in a faction of the Shiv Sena party that opposes the BJP, and several of Gandhi’s aides.

An Apple spokesman added Tuesday that the alerts were not sent only in India. “Apple has sent Threat Notifications to individuals whose accounts are in nearly 150 countries,” he said.

Apple’s revelations — even if they do not point to the Indian government — come at a sensitive time. The Cupertino, Calif.-based company has been in talks with the Indian government about expanding its footprint in India as it diversifies its supply chain outside China.

Apple is also looking to make inroads with consumers in India and opened its first retail store in the country in April at an event attended by Chief Executive Tim Cook. The company saw annual sales in India rise almost 50 percent to $6 billion during the year ending in March 2023, Bloomberg News reported.