India orders GitHub to pull Dorsey app as student protests spread
Takedown notice cites "anti-national elements" but names no incident, landing hours after Modi addressed exam-leak demonstrations
NEW DELHI, India (MNTV) — India has ordered GitHub to remove the open-source code for Bitchat, the offline messaging app built by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, as student-led protests spread across the country and demonstrators accuse the government of suppressing dissent.
The order, issued late Thursday by the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre under the Ministry of Home Affairs, gave GitHub three hours to disable access to the repositories hosting Bitchat and its Android version.
The government’s stated concern is architectural: the app’s decentralized design, it argues, could be exploited by terrorist organizations, organized crime, and “anti-national elements,” and would frustrate lawful surveillance and criminal investigations.
What makes Bitchat different is that it does not need the network. Instead of routing through servers like WhatsApp or Signal, it lets nearby devices pass messages directly over Bluetooth in a decentralized mesh, so it keeps working during internet shutdowns and without mandatory registration or centralized logging. The government says those same features enable anonymous coordination during riots and let users evade interception.
The notice identifies no specific criminal incident involving Bitchat.
It treats the technology as a risk because of what it can do, not because of anything anyone has done with it — and what it can do, in practice, is let people talk to each other when the state has switched off the internet.
The timing sharpens the point. The order came hours after Prime Minister Narendra Modi broke his silence on the nationwide youth protests, promising legislation against examination paper leaks after days of demonstrations in the capital and other cities, where police have detained protesters and used force against those trying to march on Parliament.
Dorsey responded on X that the Indian government does not like technologies like Bitchat and wants it taken down.
Alt News co-founder Pratik Sinha noted that the app keeps functioning when mobile communications are cut, and would be particularly useful at protests such as the ongoing demonstrations at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi, where thousands of students are demanding accountability for repeated exam paper leaks.
That context is the story. India is among the world’s heaviest users of internet shutdowns, routinely suspending mobile data and broadband during protests, communal violence, and security operations — a practice rights groups say falls hardest on freedom of expression and on the ability of journalists, activists, and ordinary people to reach one another.
An app designed to survive exactly that has now been ordered off the internet, in the middle of exactly that.
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