DELHI PRESS
129 Websites Were Blocked on Two Court Orders That Never Existed — Now the PMO Wants an Explanation
The Story — Reuters revealed on Wednesday, November 11 that the Department of Telecommunications this year directed internet providers to block 129 illegal betting websites on two purported High Court orders — 34 websites on July 21 under an order attributed to the Rajasthan High Court, and 95 on September 2 under one attributed to the Allahabad High Court. Both orders were emailed to officials by people posing as lawyers and uploaded to the department’s website. Neither exists in the courts’ records: the Rajasthan registrar called its order apparently fraudulent, and an Allahabad technical check on November 3 found no such writ petition or order; the court filed a police complaint on November 6.
The forged orders carried fabricated court logos, blue seals bearing the national emblem and a QR code that led only to a page displaying a case number. The telecom ministry has opened an internal inquiry, police are investigating forgery and cheating, the department unblocked the 95 Allahabad-order websites on November 13, and on Saturday, November 14 the Prime Minister’s Office summoned Telecom Secretary Amit Agrawal to explain the lapse.
The Hindu BusinessLine leads with the summons but frames a safeguards failure — a lack of checks that “could allow falsified court documents to be used to block legitimate websites” — carrying the November 13 unblocking order, the AI-fabrication concern, and the note that the telecom secretary did not respond to its queries.
Hindustan Times tells it from inside the Allahabad court two days earlier: the administration’s FIR, the verification chain a Reuters query set off, and a police probe asking the department who handles its website — a 24-point questionnaire, three investigative tracks. The Rajasthan order, the 129 total and the PMO do not appear.
Mirror Now runs the summons as a “growing security scandal” testing “the integrity of India’s digital censorship infrastructure,” with the secretary under pressure to account — and the system responding: internal investigation, criminal probe, one fake order removed by Saturday. Blocking policy itself is not examined.
A blocking system built for speed accepted two emailed forgeries at face value, and a journalist’s query — not an internal check — is what caught them. What to watch is whether verification with the issuing court becomes a required step, who sent the emails, and whether the 34 Rajasthan-order websites are also unblocked.
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Read More →The day’s biggest stories, all three angles, in one email.
Every story above was covered by outlets across the spectrum. We read all of them, print the facts everyone agrees on, and show you how each side framed it — with their own headlines linked.
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