India Blocked 129 Betting Websites on Court Orders That Turned Out to Be Fake

The case shows how easily fake orders can get through India's official content removal process, one of the strictest in the world. Any organisation with a website in India could be exposed. Courts elsewhere are also dealing with fabricated legal material, including precedents generated by artificial intelligence. Reuters said it could not determine how the two orders were made or whether AI was used.

The department issued the two blocking directions on July 21 and September 2 and published both on its website as part of its routine uploads. Each came with an emailed copy of what looked like a court order: one from the High Court of Rajasthan and one from the Allahabad High Court in Uttar Pradesh. Each order named dozens of websites to be taken down.

Neither order appears in the courts' online registration records, Reuters found. After the news agency asked about it, the Rajasthan High Court's registrar said in an email that the order bearing the court's name "appears to be fraudulent" and did not exist on its server. The Allahabad High Court decided its order was fake and filed a police complaint on November 6. Police case documents show an investigation has been opened against unknown persons for alleged forgery and cheating.

"It is fake. It is not a genuine order from High Court of Allahabad," Ghanshyam Yadav, a senior cybercrime official in Uttar Pradesh, told Reuters. He said no one had been arrested.

The telecoms department did not respond to Reuters' questions. As of Wednesday, both orders were still on its website.

The Rajasthan document reached the department in an email sent at 8:59 p.m. on Sunday, July 19. It was signed by "Aryan Chaudhary", who was described as an advocate-on-record. When Reuters wrote to that email address, the message bounced back as "Recipient not found". The order told officials to act within 24 hours and cited a provision of Indian IT law that allows takedowns in the interest of national security. Two days later, the government told internet service providers to remove 34 betting websites listed in the order.

The Allahabad document was dated August 14 and carried the court's logo, its seal and a QR code that would normally let anyone check whether an order is genuine. In this case the code led to an unrelated webpage showing only a case number, "Writ — A 30480/2026". A man who identified himself as advocate Kartikey Pandey cited that number when he sent the order to officials on August 22. He did not respond to Reuters. Officials exchanged several messages, including a request for an "action taken report". On September 2, an official told internet service providers to block 95 betting websites.

The Allahabad order was signed in the name of "Justice Garima Prashad". According to the police documents, her office confirmed that "no such order has been passed by Her Ladyship."

All the blocked sites offered gambling, which is illegal in India. The episode still raises a wider concern for companies and publishers: a forged order can be enough to get a website blocked. Modi's government has often been criticised for overusing takedown orders against dissent, although it says it orders removals only in the public interest.

This is not the only recent case. Elon Musk's X told an Indian court last week that police directives sent to two free speech groups, warning that their accounts would be removed, had turned out to be fake. In July, India's Supreme Court set aside a tribunal's orders because they relied on judgments that did not exist. Last year, Supreme Court justices said that fabricated orders "bearing forged signatures of Judges strikes at the very foundation of public trust".

It is still unclear who made the two orders and whether the 129 sites will be unblocked. Police in Uttar Pradesh are investigating, and the telecoms department has not said whether it will change how it checks court orders before acting on them.