Two forged High Court orders were used to trigger government directions to internet service providers to block 129 websites in India. The episode has exposed serious questions about how official agencies authenticate judicial documents before acting on them — and how a convincing-looking seal, signature or QR code can be used to lend false authority to a fabricated order.
The case came to light through a Reuters investigation published on November 11, followed by a report on November 12 detailing the government inquiry and the police investigation. The two purported orders were issued in the names of the Rajasthan High Court and the Allahabad High Court. Both courts subsequently indicated that the documents were not genuine.
How 129 websites were affected
According to the documents reviewed by Reuters, the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) issued two blocking directions to internet service providers this year. The first, dated July 21, followed a purported Rajasthan High Court order and covered 34 websites. A second direction, dated September 2, relied on a purported Allahabad High Court order and covered another 95 websites.
The websites were described in the reports as betting or gambling-related platforms. The combined total was 129. The issue at the heart of the investigation, however, is not whether the websites were lawful; it is that the judicial documents cited to support the blocking directions were found to be forged.
What made the documents look genuine?
The purported orders carried official-looking court logos and seals. The Allahabad High Court document also contained a QR code — a feature commonly used to help verify court records. But the code reportedly led to a webpage displaying a case number rather than an authenticated court record.
Reuters reported that the Rajasthan High Court’s registrar said the order bearing the court’s name appeared to be fraudulent and did not exist on its server. In the Allahabad matter, the court’s internal verification found that the cited case number did not exist in its records and that no order matching the document had been uploaded on the stated date. The judge named in the purported order had not passed it, according to the court’s verification.
Police investigation and government response
The Allahabad High Court administration initiated police action, and a case was registered in Prayagraj on November 6 against unknown persons. Uttar Pradesh cybercrime officials have sought records from the telecom department, including content-management system details and digital logs, to establish how the documents were received and processed. Reuters reported that investigators sent the ministry 24 questions.
A separate Reuters report on November 12 said the telecom ministry had opened an inquiry into the blocking process and was considering additional verification checks before acting on court orders. The ministry was also seeking to identify those behind the email accounts used to submit the purported orders. An official told Reuters that the department planned to revoke the blocking directions based on the forged documents and remove related material from its website.
Why this matters beyond betting websites
Website blocking is a consequential exercise: it can make an online service inaccessible to users across the country. When a government department acts on a judicial direction, the authenticity of that direction is fundamental. If a forged document can pass through the process, the risk is not limited to the category of websites involved in this case. A legitimate business, news platform, civil-society organisation or other online service could potentially be affected by a similar misuse of legal authority.
The episode also underlines why a QR code or an official-looking seal should never be treated as proof on its own. Verification must lead back to the court’s own authenticated records or a trusted official channel. The investigation has not established that artificial intelligence was used to create these particular forged orders; that possibility should not be presented as fact.
The larger question: who verifies the verifier?
The immediate task for investigators is to identify who prepared and transmitted the forged documents and how they entered the official workflow. For the government, the larger test is whether the process can be strengthened so that a blocking instruction is independently checked with the issuing court before it is enforced.
Digital governance depends not only on the power to act quickly, but also on the ability to verify the authority behind an instruction. This case is a reminder that a document can look official and still be false — and that the consequences of failing to check can extend far beyond the original target.
Sources: Reuters: India probes website blocks based on forged court orders; police seek logs (November 12, 2026); Reuters investigation on the forged orders (November 11, 2026).
Image is representative and does not depict either High Court named in this report.
