India Demands Removal of Dorsey’s Bitchat Code as Authorities Restrict Protest Communications

The Enforcement Action

India’s Cyber Crime Coordination Centre has escalated its crackdown on decentralized communication tools by targeting Bitchat, the serverless messaging application created by Jack Dorsey. The agency, operating under the Ministry of Home Affairs, issued a formal directive to GitHub demanding the removal of three code repositories associated with the Bitchat project within a three-hour window. The targeted repositories—the core Bitchat project, its Android build, and the Android releases page—were cited under provisions of India’s Information Technology Act of 2000 and the 2021 IT Rules. According to the notice, Bitchat’s architecture poses a regulatory concern because it enables direct message transmission between nearby devices via Bluetooth mesh networks, circumventing the need for internet infrastructure, servers, phone numbers, or user accounts. This design, the agency contended, creates significant obstacles for law enforcement surveillance and investigation. The notice warned that such technology could potentially be exploited during instances of public unrest, civil disorder, terrorism, organized crime, or telecommunications blackouts.

Protests and Communication Restrictions

The enforcement action coincides with significant civil unrest in India over examination paper leaks. Youth-led demonstrations have drawn tens of thousands to rallies in Delhi, with protesters organizing informally around the satirical “Cockroach Janta Party.” In response to the demonstrations, authorities implemented mobile internet restrictions in areas surrounding Parliament and the Jantar Mantar protest site. Facing these connectivity restrictions, demonstrators turned to offline-capable communication tools. Bitchat emerged as critical infrastructure during these internet shutdowns, enabling people to continue organizing without reliance on conventional telecommunications networks. This practical use case for decentralized messaging appears to have triggered regulatory action, with the government viewing the tool’s capability to function during shutdowns as inherently threatening to state control over communications during periods of civil unrest.

Decentralization Under Pressure

Jack Dorsey responded to the takedown notice by publicly posting the government order, noting that “the government of india does not like technologies like bitchat.” The Bitchat Community emphasized that “governments that fear people talking without permission will always go after the tools that make it possible.” Digital rights advocates have condemned the action, with the Internet Freedom Foundation calling the order “unconstitutional and authoritarian,” arguing that it identifies no specific unlawful content and circumvents India’s established content-restriction procedures. This action reflects a broader pattern of state pressure against permissionless communication technologies. China similarly moved against Bitchat by ordering its removal from Apple’s App Store in April 2026, continuing its historical stance against independent communication platforms—mirroring its previous ban on Damus, another Dorsey-developed application using the Nostr protocol. The takedown order underscores a fundamental tension between sovereign regulatory frameworks and decentralized technologies designed to operate beyond centralized control. As governments worldwide contend with protest movements and information control, they increasingly target the infrastructure enabling permissionless communication, raising questions about how open-source projects and decentralized systems will coexist with state authority.

Governments cracking down on decentralized communication infrastructure underscore why the crypto community champions technologies that operate independently of centralized gatekeepers.

Source: Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C), via Decrypt. Not financial advice.