India's telecom department ordered 95 betting domains blocked on a purported Allahabad High Court order the court says it never passed

India's telecom regulator ordered internet providers to cut off access to 95 betting domains on the strength of a court order that, its own published records show, arrived by email without the petition it was supposedly based on.

The DoT direction dated September 2, 2026, signed by the Additional Director General (Technology) at the Director General Telecom headquarters, instructed "all Licensees with Internet Service Authorization" to "take immediate necessary action in respect of blocking access" to 95 websites. It cites paragraph 8, Direction II, of an Allahabad High Court order dated August 14, 2026 in Writ-A No. 30480 of 2026, Sahil Singh vs. The Director General (DIT Cyber Law), MeitY & Ors., and was posted on DoT's page of blocking instructions issued under court orders for July to September 2026.

What the purported order said

The order attached to DoT's file is presented as an in-chamber ruling by Justice Garima Prashad, "reserved on 11.08.2026" and "delivered on 14.08.2026". It describes the 95 domains as "fake public Indian Premier League (IPL) match streaming and digital betting operations" and directs the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) to use its blocking powers under Section 69A of the Information Technology Act, and DoT to have every licensed ISP and telecom operator block the domains, each within 24 hours.

A third direction orders the hosting providers and domain registrars to suspend and lock the domains within 24 hours and to "preserve all user logs, payment details, and KYC credentials of the registrants". The attached schedule names a registrar for every domain: GoDaddy for 62 and Namecheap for 20, with the rest spread across Gname.com, Dynadot and six others. The domains include variants of 1xBet, Parimatch, Fairplay, Lotus365, Laser247, Reddy Book, SatSport, Sky Exchange, Gold365 and World777.

The order also says it may be served "exclusively" from the email address of the petitioner's counsel, named as Kartikey Pandey, Senior Advocate.

How it moved through DoT

The email chain DoT published with the direction shows that the order was emailed to DoT on August 22, marked "URGENT COMPLIANCE". On August 24, an Assistant Section Officer in DoT's Law Division forwarded it for action, noting that "only a copy of the order has been attached by the sender with the mail, and no other documents, such as a copy of the writ petition", had been received. The Law Division sent a reminder on August 27 seeking an action taken report.

On August 28, an Assistant Director (Technology) at DGT headquarters wrote back to the sender asking for the 95 URLs "in editable Excel format, preferably with one URL per row", because extracting them from a PDF could lead to errors. The blocking direction followed on September 2.

The court's response

Reuters reported on November 11 that the Allahabad High Court had found the order fake and filed a police complaint on November 6, and that police case documents showed an investigation against unknown persons for alleged forgery and cheating. A state cybercrime official told the agency no arrests had been made. Reuters also reported that a July 21 DoT direction to block 34 betting websites relied on a purported Rajasthan High Court order that the court's registrar said "appears to be fraudulent".

DoT did not respond to Reuters' questions, the agency said. Both directions remained on DoT's website on November 11.

India's blocking of offshore betting sites is part of the enforcement we track in our Asia gambling enforcement coverage.