Pavel Durov
Durov publicly condemned India's week-long nationwide Telegram ban (June 16–22) as disproportionate punishment of 150 million users, alleged Reliance and Meta lobbied for it, and lost his Delhi High Court challenge when the court ruled the restrictions proportionate.
Pavel Durov spent this cycle fighting India's week-long nationwide ban of Telegram — and losing. The ban, imposed June 16 to prevent leaks of the NEET-UG 2026 medical-entrance exam, cut off roughly 150 million Indian users for seven days. Durov publicly condemned the move as disproportionate, arguing it punished ordinary users while leak content simply migrated to other platforms. Telegram petitioned the Delhi High Court, but Justice Tejas Karia denied immediate interim relief on June 17, and the court ultimately ruled the restrictions proportionate.
Durov went further than courtroom argument. He alleged that Reliance and WhatsApp parent Meta lobbied for the ban, and accused Reliance of disrupting Telegram access outside India through BGP hijacking. Industry sources dismissed the BGP claim as confusing Reliance Industries with insolvent Reliance Communications, leaving Durov's accusation looking thinly sourced.
The government's courtroom posture was hostile. Attorney General R. Venkataramani called Telegram's architecture a "Frankenstein," and the government labeled the platform a "new dark web" connecting to criminal forums — positioning Telegram not as a neutral intermediary but as structurally complicit in exam-paper leaks. Telegram countered that it had already removed more than 900 unlawful links, making a blanket ban the wrong tool.
The ban's collateral effects appeared to vindicate Durov's long-standing argument that technical barriers push users toward privacy tools rather than eliminating demand: VPN downloads surged to their highest single-day level since early 2025, and alternative Telegram clients gained traction. But the court was unmoved, and Durov exits the episode with a legal defeat, a contested lobbying allegation, and a platform whose reputation in India has taken a public battering from the government it challenged.
On their plate
Telegram petitioned the Delhi High Court to overturn the nationwide ban imposed to prevent NEET-UG 2026 medical-exam leaks. Justice Tejas Karia denied immediate interim relief on June 17, and the court later ruled the restrictions were proportionate, rejecting Telegram's argument that it had already removed 900+ unlawful links and that the ban disproportionately hit 150 million users.
Durov argued the ban punished 150 million ordinary users while exam-leak content simply migrated to other apps. He alleged Reliance and WhatsApp (Meta) lobbied for the ban and accused Reliance of disrupting Telegram access outside India via BGP hijacking — claims industry sources dismissed as confusing Reliance Industries with insolvent Reliance Communications.
In the reserved-judgment hearing, Attorney General R. Venkataramani called Telegram's architecture a 'Frankenstein,' and the government labeled the platform a 'new dark web' connecting to criminal forums. The government's framing positioned Telegram not as a neutral intermediary but as structurally complicit in exam-paper leaks.
Key relationships
India's Attorney General characterized Telegram's architecture as a 'Frankenstein' in court, framing the platform as structurally dangerous rather than merely hosting unlawful content.
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