The Ministry of Home Affairs’ (MHA) Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C) has sent 426 content takedown notices to platforms since it became responsible for notifying instances of unlawful acts using platform resources in March 2024. Through takedown notices issued under Section 79(3)(b) of the IT Act, 2000, the I4C asked platforms to remove 1.10 lakh URLs and accounts from their services.
This comes as part of the government’s submission (as reviewed by MediaNama) to the Karnataka High Court in the court case that X (formerly Twitter) has filed against content takedown notices under Section 79(3)(b). Section 79 protects platforms from liability for the content that a third party posts on their service. Part (3)(b) of Section 79 states that platforms can lose this liability if they fail to remove unlawful content after the government or its agencies notify them about said content. X claims that by taking down content through Section 79(3)(b) via its Sahyog portal, (which automates content takedown notices), the government is looking to bypass procedural safeguards under Section 69A of the IT Act—the provision actually meant for content takedowns.
Of the total content takedown notices, the majority (78) were sent to WhatsApp to take down 83,673 accounts/groups. This figure aligns with the 83,668 WhatsApp account takedowns the Ministry of Home Affairs recently attributed to digital arrest scams in Parliament. The I4C says that the accounts/groups it took down were associated with transnational trading and investment scams, impersonation and misuse of law enforcement agencies, offensive content, disharmony, and other fraudulent activities. Across platforms, deepfakes and investment scams appear to be common issues that I4C intended to tackle through takedown notices.
You can read more details of this case here.
Highlights of I4C’s takedown requests:
Who issued the notices through the Sahyog portal?
Since October 2024, when the I4C launched the Sahyog portal, the central and state governments have asked platforms to take down 513 URLs through it. Of these, platforms have taken down 384 URLs. So far, I4C is the authority that made the majority of the takedown requests (49). Besides I4C, the only other central government agency that sent takedown notices was the Ministry of Finance’s Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU). FIU requested the takedown of 10 URLs, of which the platforms took down only one. On the state government front, Karnataka issued the most takedown notices at 28, requesting platforms to take down 85 different URLs, of which platforms took down 61.
Also read:
Support our journalism: