Delhi Police's Crime Branch has registered an FIR against unidentified persons for allegedly impersonating the force and forging a senior officer's signature to send fake notices to X, seeking the blocking of accounts run by two digital rights organisations, officials said. The matter reportedly surfaced during a hearing in the Delhi High Court.
X told the court on November 6 that an internal investigation had found the notices, purportedly issued in the police's name, to be forged, and that it had neither taken down nor blocked the accounts. "It turns out that it was somebody playing imposter," counsel for the platform, Ankit Parhar, submitted before Justice Amit Mahajan. The court subsequently disposed of petitions filed by the two groups challenging the notices.
The accounts belong to the Internet Freedom Foundation and the Software Freedom Law Centre. Per the platform's account to the court, it was told on November 3 that it had received requests from the Delhi Police, with an illegal content report filed in the name of Special Commissioner of Police (Crime) Hargobinder Singh Dhaliwal citing safety and security, defamation and other grounds as violations of Indian law.
Police said they traced IP addresses to a device operating from Srinagar, and that a 17-year-old was reportedly picked up there in the early hours of Wednesday. The FIR is understood to invoke provisions of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita on forgery and impersonation of a public servant, along with computer-related offences under the Information Technology Act.
Accounts of the timeline diverge. One places the FIR on Saturday; another says the teenager was picked up a day after the case was registered. Delhi Police, through central government standing counsel Ashish Dixit, has told the court it did not send any such requests. A request for comment to the force's spokesperson went unanswered, according to one account.
The purported order, as described, listed 40 links across 37 posts and sought the entire accounts of the two groups plus that of Geo Blocked in India, a handle that compiles blocking orders in the country, besides the removal of posts by 16 other users. The groups argued that defamation is not a police matter and that a non-cognisable offence cannot be investigated without a magistrate's order.
The episode follows an earlier round. On October 30, the groups went public with similar notices purportedly from the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. The organisation has not officially commented; one of its members, Ratan Sharda, and Kanchan Gupta, an adviser in the information and broadcasting ministry, denied on social media that any such notice had been sent.
Questions have also been raised about the email address used. The Software Freedom Law Centre said an address listed for the Special Commissioner (Crime) in the police directory bounced on November 4 and was changed in the directory a day later. Further investigation is underway, police said.
(With inputs from media reports)