India Shut Down Telegram for Six Days as VPN Downloads Hit Record Highs

Key Takeaways

• India's Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology blocked Telegram from June 16 to 22 on the National Testing Agency's recommendation, citing fraud ahead of the NEET-UG re-examination.
• Simultaneously, authorities ordered Telegram to disable message editing for every Indian user until June 30, under a legal basis the Internet Freedom Foundation says was never identified.
• VPN app downloads in India surged 49% on the day of the ban, reaching 208,000 downloads, the highest single-day figure since at least the start of 2025.
• The Delhi High Court upheld the temporary block on June 19, finding it not disproportionate under Section 69A of the IT Act.
• Digital rights group the Internet Freedom Foundation argued the ban punished millions of ordinary users while doing nothing to address the systemic source of exam fraud.

The Exam Was Secure. The Ban Kept Running Anyway.

India's National Testing Agency cancelled the NEET-UG medical entrance exam on May 12 after allegations of a paper leak tied to the May 3 sitting. A re-test was scheduled for June 21. To protect it, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology blocked access to Telegram across India from June 16, under Section 69A of the Information Technology Act, until June 22.

Simultaneously, the government ordered Telegram to disable message editing for every Indian user until June 30. The Internet Freedom Foundation noted that the NTA's press release identified no statutory basis for that second directive, the one reaching into the product itself and redesigning it for an entire country.

Telegram challenged the block in the Delhi High Court, with lawyers arguing the company had already removed hundreds of channels and links flagged by authorities and that a platform-wide restriction affecting what Telegram says are over 150 million users in India was disproportionate.

The Delhi High Court upheld the restriction on June 19, with Justice Tejas Karia ruling it complied with Section 69A and was not disproportionate. The NTA's own press release had already undermined that conclusion. The agency credited targeted channel takedowns with containing the harm and confirmed that "no such paper is available outside the secured examination chain."

If the exam was already secure and targeted removals were working, the government reached for a heavier tool while admitting a lighter one had done the job.

Every Ban Sends VPN Downloads Somewhere

The day India announced the Telegram restriction, VPN app downloads in India jumped from a recent daily average of 139,000 to 208,000, a 49% single-day surge and the highest figure recorded since at least the start of 2025, according to app intelligence firm Appfigures.

Meanwhile, Telegram itself was not going quietly. Sensor Tower reported that Telegram's daily active users in India rose 17% on the day of the ban announcement, the app's largest day-over-day increase in the country since a widespread Meta outage in 2021. Cloudflare Radar observed DNS requests for Telegram domains spike sharply in the two days following the restriction, suggesting large numbers of users were actively trying to reach the platform after it was blocked.

This is what platform bans produce when applied to services with large, motivated user bases, and it fits the documented pattern of India's growing comfort with shutdowns.

A Legitimate Reason Does Not Make a Proportionate Outcome

The NEET fraud problem is real, the exam matters to lakhs of students whose futures depend on it, and the Internet Freedom Foundation was explicit on this, saying the re-examination was worth protecting. And yet accepting that the reason was legitimate is not the same as accepting that the response was proportionate. 

The source of exam paper leaks is inside the system, in the printing and logistics chain, among insiders. Telegram is the most downstream distribution channel. Shutting it off deflects attention from the systemic failures that keep producing leaks while doing nothing to address them.

The message editing directive is the harder detail to wave away. India did not just block access to a platform. India ordered a company to remove a product feature for every user in the country, on no identified legal basis, until June 30. That is a different kind of intervention, and it fits a pattern that India's expanding content control rules have been building toward for some time.

I think governments do not need bad reasons to normalize blunt tools. They need acceptable-looking ones, and the exam-fraud one fits right in there. Every platform ban upheld with a sympathetic justification makes the next one easier to issue, easier to defend in court, and easier for the public to accept. The block was lifted on June 22. The editing order runs until June 30. The precedent runs longer than either.

If you're in India or anywhere else where the government has already shown it's comfortable reaching for the off switch, a virtual private network is a practical answer, and you can get Mysterium VPN with 78% off right now. The Telegram ban might be lifted for the moment, but it would be naive to believe that this wasn’t just the begging, so be prepared for when it happens again.