Delhi protesters use Bitchat mesh app as order targets offline messaging tool

India’s Cyber Crime Coordination Centre, an arm of the Ministry of Home Affairs, ordered GitHub to disable access within three hours to three repositories tied to Bitchat, the Jack Dorsey-backed Bluetooth mesh messaging app, under Section 79(3)(b) of the Information Technology Act, 2000. The notice, dated July 23, targeted the main project, its Android build and Android release files under the permissionlesstech account, and threatened GitHub with loss of safe-harbor protection and criminal prosecution. The order arrived as students protesting exam-paper leaks in Delhi increasingly turned to offline tools such as Bitchat during repeated mobile internet suspensions around Jantar Mantar. The app routes encrypted messages phone-to-phone over Bluetooth mesh, relaying them across up to seven hops with Noise protocol encryption and using Nostr when internet access is available. It requires no account, phone number or central server, and its code has been released into the public domain. Jack Dorsey published the notice on X on July 24, saying the Indian government wanted the technology taken down. The Internet Freedom Foundation said the notice cited no specific unlawful content and instead objected to software that can function during network restrictions and internet shutdowns. The group called the takedown unconstitutional and authoritarian, argued Section 79(3)(b) does not grant blocking powers under the Supreme Court’s Shreya Singhal ruling, and said the near-midnight three-hour deadline left little room for legal challenge. The repositories were still accessible on GitHub as of press time, and neither GitHub nor Microsoft had commented publicly. Any takedown may have limited effect because the project has more than 3,000 public forks and copies already installed on phones would continue to work. India’s move follows China’s April order requiring Apple to remove Bitchat from its local App Store.