Modi Summons Telecom Chief Over Takedown of Websites via Fake Orders

News Desk

NEW DELHI: Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s executive office has summoned Telecommunications Secretary Amit Agrawal to explain how government officials ordered the blocking of more than 100 websites based on falsified court documents, high-ranking government sources revealed on Saturday.

The urgent intervention from the Prime Minister’s Office highlights escalating executive concern following public disclosures that regulatory authorities acted on forged judicial directives without basic verification.

The administrative crisis erupted earlier this week after it was revealed that telecom officials instructed national internet service providers to block 129 illegal online betting websites.

However, those enforcement notices were derived entirely from fake High Court rulings emailed to bureaucrats by unidentified individuals posing as practicing lawyers.

Following the revelation, Agrawal, who serves as the most senior bureaucrat in the telecommunications ministry, was ordered to cut short an official visit to another state to explain the security lapse.

Although online betting remains illegal across most Indian jurisdictions, the incident has exposed severe structural vulnerabilities in the country’s web-takedown architecture.

Cyber law experts and civil society groups warn that the complete absence of rigorous authentication safeguards in India’s content-blocking framework creates a dangerous precedent.

Experts caution that fraudulent judicial paperwork could easily be weaponized by bad actors to arbitrarily censor legitimate news agencies, commercial portals, and independent public platforms.

Following the exposure, state police authorities initiated a formal criminal investigation against unknown perpetrators under charges of forgery, criminal conspiracy, and cheating.

The Prime Minister’s Office is now expected to institute stringent verification protocols and mandatory digital authentication for all future judicial takedown notices, while internal oversight bodies assess procedural failures within the telecommunications ministry.