BENGALURU: The Karnataka High Court on Tuesday directed the Union Government to block the Switzerland-based ProtonMail in India and to take steps for immediate blocking of the offending Uniform Resource Locator (URLs) of Protonmail till action is taken to block the service. Justice M Nagaprasanna pronounced the operative portion of the order, allowing a petition by M Moser Design Associates India, Bengaluru. The full order is yet to be released.
The petitioner moved the high court seeking directions to the Centre to act against Proton AG, pointing out that Proton’s servers are located outside India, and it is claiming that it is not bound by Indian laws.
While contending that Proton’s email service allows users to select India as their location, which gives a false impression that the company is operating from within the country, the petitioner stated that it filed a police complaint in November 2024. It alleged that some unknown persons are misusing Proton Mail to target the company’s female employees by sending obscene, abusive and derogatory emails containing AI-generated deep-fake images and explicit content. But not much progress has been made on the police complaint.
The police have not utilised the legal assistance agreements and arrangements between India and Switzerland to initiate action against Proton, based on the First Information Report, the petitioner alleged.
“Mandamus issued to respondents- Ministry of Home Affairs, Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (Meity) and Ministry of Communications to initiate proceedings in terms of Section 69A of the Information Technology Act 2000 read with Rule 10 of the IT Procedure and Safeguards of Blocking of Access to Information by Public Access Rules, 2009 to block ProtonMail bearing in mind the observations made in the order.
Till such proceedings are taken up and concluded by the Government of India, the offending Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) that are indicated in the petitions should be blocked forthwith,” the court said.
The petitioner’s counsel submitted that at the instance of Tamil Nadu police, the Union IT Ministry has already sought to block ProtonMail. The court’s attention was also drawn to a decision of the Delhi High Court in the case of Runa Devi and connected matters which was disposed of on October 23, 2024.
In that case, directions were given to the Delhi police as well as the Ministry of Home Affairs to look into the e-mail address/service used, which is allegedly provided by Proton as it is stated to have been banned.
Pointing out that there is a mutual agreement of assistance between India and Switzerland and a letter rogatory can be issued by a competent criminal court on the request made by the investigating officer to seek information from another country, the union government contended that it will comply with the directions if same are issued by the court under the relevant rules to ban the offending e-mail service.