The discovery that 129 betting websites were blocked in India on the basis of two fraudulent High Court orders exposes a vulnerability in the country’s online content-removal system: a document presented as judicial authority appears to have passed through official channels before the courts themselves confirmed that it did not exist.
The incident, reported by Reuters and carried by Economic Times, involved two directions issued by the Department of Telecommunications on July 21 and September 2. The directions instructed internet service providers to block 34 and 95 betting websites respectively. Both sets of instructions were accompanied by purported orders from the Rajasthan High Court and the Allahabad High Court.
Subsequent checks found that neither order appeared in the relevant court records. The registrar of the Rajasthan High Court told Reuters that the order bearing the court’s name appeared to be fraudulent and did not exist on its server. In Uttar Pradesh, the Allahabad High Court found that its order was fake and filed a police complaint on November 6. Police documents reviewed by Reuters show that an investigation into alleged forgery and cheating has begun against unknown persons.
The episode is significant not only because illegal betting websites were targeted. It also raises a basic administrative question: how does a government agency verify that a document invoking judicial power is genuine before converting it into a nationwide digital restriction?
That question matters because website blocking is not a single technical action. It is an institutional chain involving the authority issuing a direction, the document or legal basis attached to it, government officials processing the request, internet service providers implementing the restriction and courts or agencies that may later review the decision. A weakness at any point can turn a forged document into an operational instruction.
In this case, the purported Rajasthan order arrived at the telecoms department by email at 8:59 p.m. on July 19. It was attributed to Aryan Chaudhary, described as an advocate-on-record. A Reuters query to the email address used by Chaudhary returned a “Recipient not found” message. The order instructed that its directions be executed within 24 hours and invoked a provision of Indian information-technology law allowing takedowns in the interest of national security.
The government then directed internet service providers to remove 34 websites listed in the accompanying document. The sequence described by Reuters shows how a forged judicial document can acquire administrative force when it is attached to an official communication and distributed through a routine government process.
The second case involved a purported Allahabad High Court order. It carried the court’s logo and seal and included a QR code that appeared to offer a way to verify the document. According to Reuters, the QR code instead led to a random webpage displaying a one-line case number: Writ—A 30480/2026. The same number was cited by a person identifying himself as advocate Kartikey Pandey, who sent the document to Indian officials on August 22.
The document triggered exchanges among officials, including a request for an action-taken report. On September 2, an Indian official instructed internet service providers to take immediate action to block 95 betting websites. The order was signed in the name of Justice Garima Prashad, but police case-registration documents state that the judge’s office confirmed that no such order had been passed.
The reported facts point to a gap between document appearance and institutional verification. The forged papers reportedly carried blue court seals, the national emblem, formal legal language and, in one case, a QR code. These elements can make a document appear credible to a recipient working within a high-volume administrative system. They do not, however, establish that the document was issued by the court named on it.
The central issue is therefore not whether the websites targeted by the directions were legal or illegal. The report states that gambling is illegal under Indian law. The issue is whether the state’s action was supported by an authentic legal instrument. Legality of the targeted activity and authenticity of the court order are separate questions, and the latter is essential to the legitimacy of the blocking process.
The incident also arrives amid wider concerns about fabricated legal material. India’s Supreme Court in July set aside tribunal orders that relied on non-existent judgments, according to the report. The article also notes that a United States judge recently disqualified lawyers over fabricated legal citations. It was not clear whether artificial intelligence had been used to create the two Indian orders, but the case illustrates how digitally produced or digitally altered documents can imitate institutional authority.
The technology itself is only one part of the problem. A forged order can be created or circulated through digital channels, but it becomes consequential when administrative systems accept its stated origin without a sufficiently reliable check. The presence of a QR code, an email trail or an official-looking seal may support an initial impression of authenticity, while still failing to answer the decisive question: is the document present in the issuing court’s records?
This is particularly important for India’s online blocking mechanism, which Reuters describes as one of the world’s strictest. The government has faced criticism over takedowns of online posts and websites, while maintaining that removals are ordered in the public interest and to protect law and order. In such a system, verification is not a procedural detail. It is the safeguard that separates a lawful restriction from an unauthorised one.
The report does not establish how the forged orders were generated, who created them or whether the individuals named in the documents were responsible. The Rajasthan order was linked to an email address that could not be reached, while the person identifying himself as Kartikey Pandey did not respond to Reuters’ query. No arrests had been made in the Allahabad case at the time of the report.
Nor does the report establish whether the 129 websites remained blocked after the orders were found to be fraudulent. It states that both purported court orders remained on the ministry’s website as of Wednesday. That detail creates a further records-management question: how should government systems label, correct or remove documents that were published as part of an official process but later identified as fake?
The matter also has implications beyond betting websites. The report says that the forged orders could affect the online presence of any organisation operating in India. If a fake judicial document can be used to initiate a government blocking direction, the potential target is not limited to one category of website. The same administrative weakness could, in principle, affect media platforms, businesses, civil-society groups or other online services, although the supplied report does not identify additional cases arising from this episode.
A related incident involving X has already drawn attention to the problem of fake official instructions. The platform told an Indian court that police directives warning two free-speech groups about the removal of their accounts had been found to be fake. The report presents this alongside the betting-website case as evidence that fraudulent orders are entering disputes over online speech and access through more than one channel.
The institutional responsibilities are distributed. Courts maintain records of orders and can confirm whether a judgment or direction exists. The telecoms department issues blocking directions and communicates them to internet service providers. Providers implement those directions. Police investigate allegations of forgery and cheating. When these functions are connected by email, websites and uploaded documents, the system depends on each institution recognising the limits of its own role and confirming the authority of the preceding step.
The reported case shows what happens when the chain is treated as an exchange of documents rather than a verification process. A telecoms department communication can be official while the document attached to it is fraudulent. An order can carry a court logo while not being a court order. A QR code can point to a case number while not proving that the underlying proceeding exists. Administrative authenticity and judicial authenticity must therefore be checked separately.
The wider urban and digital-governance question is how public authority is exercised through infrastructure that citizens rarely see. Internet access now depends not only on networks and service providers but also on databases, government portals, legal records, email systems and compliance instructions. When those systems work, restrictions can be implemented quickly. When they fail, the same speed can make an error difficult to detect and reverse.
The evidence currently confirms that 129 betting websites were covered by two government blocking directions linked to fake High Court orders, that both courts disputed the authenticity of the documents, and that a police investigation followed in Uttar Pradesh. It does not yet identify the creators of the documents, explain how the directions were internally verified or establish the final status of the affected websites. Those unanswered questions will determine whether this was an isolated act of forgery or a sign of a broader weakness in India’s digital takedown architecture.
