India Blocked 129 Betting Websites on Fake Court Orders — and Police Are Now Investigating

India’s government ordered internet providers to block 129 betting websites this year on the basis of two court orders that never existed. A Reuters investigation has found that both orders — supposedly issued by two state high courts — were fake, and police have now opened an investigation into forgery and cheating.

The discovery raises serious questions about how India’s internet-blocking system works. India has one of the strictest content-removal systems in the world, and the government has repeatedly said it only orders websites taken down in the public interest. But if a forged document, sent by email, can get 129 websites blocked, the system has a hole in it — and nobody yet knows who made the forgeries, or whether artificial intelligence was used to create them.

What happened

India’s Department of Telecommunications issued two website-blocking directions this year: one on July 21 and one on September 2. Both directions were published on the department’s website as part of its routine uploads, and both came with emailed copies of what appeared to be court orders.

The first purported order came from the High Court of Rajasthan. The second came from the Allahabad High Court in the state of Uttar Pradesh. Together, the two orders led internet providers to block 129 websites featuring gambling, which is illegal under Indian law.

There was only one problem: neither order was real.

A Reuters review found that neither court order appears in the courts’ online registration records. When Reuters asked the courts about them, the answer was clear. The Rajasthan High Court’s registrar said in an email that the order bearing its name “appears to be fraudulent” and did not exist on its server. The Allahabad High Court went further: it found its order was fake and filed a police complaint on November 6, after Reuters shared its findings.

“It is fake. It is not a genuine order from High Court of Allahabad,” Ghanshyam Yadav, a senior state cybercrime official, told Reuters by telephone on Tuesday. He said no arrests had been made.

The Rajasthan order: an email on a Sunday evening

The first fake order arrived by email. At 8:59 p.m. (1529 GMT) on Sunday, July 19, India’s telecoms department received an email containing what appeared to be a Rajasthan High Court order. It was signed by “Aryan Chaudhary”, described as an advocate-on-record — a lawyer authorised to act for clients in a court.

When Reuters tried to contact Chaudhary at the email address used, the message bounced back as “Recipient not found”. The person, if they exist at all, could not be reached.

The order itself looked convincing. It carried a blue court seal bearing India’s national emblem, the kind of seal that appears on genuine court orders. It instructed that its directions be carried out within 24 hours, and it ended with the words “under my hand and the seal of this Hon’ble Court registrar”.

It was also based on a powerful provision of Indian IT law — the rule that allows the government to order content taken down in the interest of national security. That provision gives blocking orders real weight, and it is one of the reasons the telecoms department acted quickly.

Two days after the email arrived, on July 21, the government told internet service providers to remove 34 betting websites “as specified in the court order as per the enclosed list”, according to its published communication.

The Allahabad order: a QR code that led nowhere

The second fake order was more elaborate. Issued in the name of the Allahabad High Court and dated August 14, it carried the court’s logo and seal — and a QR code, the kind that normally lets anyone check whether a document is genuine.

But the QR code did not lead to a court record. It led to a random webpage that displayed a single line: a case number reading “Writ — A 30480/2026”.

That same case number was cited by an individual who identified himself as advocate Kartikey Pandey and sent the fake Allahabad court order to Indian officials on August 22. A Reuters query to Pandey’s email address, cited in the correspondence, received no response.

The email set off several rounds of exchanges among Indian officials, including one in which an “action taken report” was sought, according to the correspondence published on the telecoms ministry’s website. Then, on September 2, an Indian official told internet service providers to “take immediate necessary action in respect of blocking access” to 95 betting websites.

Thirty-four plus 95 makes 129 — the total number of websites blocked on the basis of the two fake orders.

The Allahabad order was signed under the name of “Justice Garima Prashad”. The police case documents reviewed by Reuters say Prashad’s office has confirmed that “no such order has been passed by Her Ladyship.”

How the forgeries were found

The investigation began with a simple check. Reuters looked for both orders in the courts’ online registration records — the official systems where real court orders are listed — and found neither one there.

From there, the news agency went to the courts themselves. The Rajasthan High Court’s registrar confirmed by email that the order in its name did not exist on the court’s server. The Allahabad High Court checked its own records, found the order was fake, and filed a police complaint on November 6.

The police investigation is now under way against unknown persons, on charges of alleged forgery and cheating. No arrests have been made so far.

What Reuters could not establish is who created the fake orders — or how. It was not clear whether artificial intelligence was used to generate them. The forgeries carried the blue seals, the national emblem, the formal language and, in one case, a QR code. Whoever made them understood how a real Indian court order looks, and how the government’s blocking system works.

Why this matters beyond betting websites

The 129 websites that were blocked were betting sites, and gambling is illegal under Indian law. On the face of it, taking them down might look like a good outcome. But the way it happened is the problem — and the problem is much bigger than betting.

India’s content-removal mechanism is considered one of the world’s strictest. The government can order internet providers to block websites and social media posts, and it does so regularly. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government has often faced criticism for going too hard against dissent by ordering takedowns of online posts or websites. The government, for its part, maintains that it orders such removals only in the public interest, to ensure law and order.

If that system can be triggered by a forged document, then it can be used against anyone. A fake court order could, in theory, be used to take down a news website, a journalist’s account, a business rival’s site, or a critic’s post. The forgeries found by Reuters were aimed at betting websites. The next ones might not be.

There are already signs that fake orders are becoming a wider problem. Last week, Elon Musk’s X told an Indian court that police directives it had sent to two free speech groups, warning them about the removal of their accounts, were found to be fake. The platform had sent the directives to the groups; the directives themselves turned out not to be genuine.

And the courts themselves have been warning about this for some time. India’s Supreme Court in July set aside a tribunal’s orders that relied on non-existent judgments. A US judge recently disqualified lawyers over the use of fabricated legal citations. Last year, India’s Supreme Court justices said that fabrication “bearing forged signatures of Judges strikes at the very foundation of public trust” and that “such grave criminal acts cannot be treated as ordinary or routine offences”.

A system built on trust — and email

Part of what makes this story remarkable is how ordinary the process was. A court order arrived by email. Officials checked it — or did not check it closely enough — and passed it on to internet providers. The providers blocked the websites. Nobody appears to have verified the order against the court’s own records until Reuters asked questions months later.

Both fake orders, and the government’s blocking directions based on them, remained on the telecoms ministry’s website as of Wednesday, November 11.

The telecoms department did not respond to Reuters’ queries about the findings.

That silence matters. The department is the gatekeeper of India’s blocking system. If it cannot say how a fake order got through, or what it will change to stop the next one, then the system remains open to the same trick.

There are straightforward fixes available. Courts could be asked to confirm every blocking order through a direct channel before it is acted on. QR codes on court orders could be linked to the courts’ own verification systems, rather than to webpages anyone can create. And blocking directions could be checked against the courts’ online records as a matter of routine, the way Reuters checked them.

None of that requires new technology. It requires a habit of verification — the same habit that caught the forgeries in the first place.

What happens next

The police investigation in Uttar Pradesh is the most immediate next step. It is against unknown persons, for alleged forgery and cheating, and it will need to answer the basic questions: who made the orders, how were they made, and were they made to help someone, or to test the system?

The Rajasthan order has not, so far, led to a police complaint of its own. The court’s registrar has said only that the order “appears to be fraudulent”.

There is also the question of the 129 websites. They were blocked on the basis of orders that did not exist. Whether they stay blocked, and on what legal basis, is now an open question — one the government has not yet answered.

And there is the wider question for India. The country blocks more online content than almost any other democracy. Each blocking order depends on the system working as it should. This investigation shows that, at least twice this year, it did not.

Frequently asked questions

How many websites were blocked because of the fake orders?

129 betting websites in total — 34 under the fake Rajasthan High Court order in July, and 95 under the fake Allahabad High Court order in September.

How were the fake orders discovered?

Reuters checked both orders against the courts’ online registration records and found neither one listed. The Rajasthan High Court’s registrar then confirmed by email that the order in its name did not exist on the court’s server, and the Allahabad High Court confirmed its order was fake and filed a police complaint on November 6.

Has anyone been arrested?

No. A senior Uttar Pradesh cybercrime official, Ghanshyam Yadav, told Reuters that no arrests had been made. The police investigation is against unknown persons.

Was artificial intelligence used to create the fake orders?

It is not known. Reuters said it was not clear how the fake orders were generated, or whether AI was used.

Are the fake orders still on the government’s website?

Yes. Both fake orders, and the blocking directions based on them, remained on the telecoms ministry’s website as of Wednesday, November 11.

Could fake court orders be used to block other kinds of websites?

That is the concern. The blocking system works the same way whatever the target is, so a convincing fake order could in principle be used against news sites, social media accounts or any other website.

Conclusion

Two emails, two fake court orders, and 129 websites gone. The Reuters investigation shows that India’s website-blocking system — one of the strictest in the world — can be switched on by a forged document that looks real enough to pass.

The betting websites at the centre of the story are illegal under Indian law, and few people will mourn them. But the method matters more than the target. A system that blocks websites on the strength of an emailed document, without checking it against the court’s own records, is a system that can be used against anyone.

The police investigation may find who made the forgeries. The harder question is what India changes to make sure it does not happen again. Until the telecoms department explains how a fake order got through — and what it will do differently — the hole in the system stays open.

Sources

• Reuters: “India ordered website takedowns on fake court orders, Reuters finds; police launch probe”
• CNBC-TV18: “India blocks 129 betting websites based on fake court orders; police launch investigation”
• The Straits Times: “India ordered website takedowns on fake court orders, Reuters finds; police launch probe”
• Khaleej Times: “India ordered website takedowns on fake court orders, Reuters finds; police launch probe”

This article is for general information and education only. It is not legal or financial advice.