'Serious Issue, Central Govt Must Act Now': Karnataka High Court Reserves Orders In Plea To Ban Proton Mail In India

The Karnataka High Court on Friday reserved its order on a petition filed by M Moser Design Associated India Pvt Ltd, seeking a direction to the Union Government to take such steps as are necessary to ban the use of Proton Mail in India.

Justice M Nagaprasanna reserved its order after hearing the parties to the petition. It orally said “He (petitioner) is aiding you (Government) to do something through the competent court, it is a serious issue, we will pass orders. Absolutely in the terms of the procedure stipulated. The Central government will have to act now.”

Advocate Jatin Saighal appearing for the company argued that the servers of Protonmail are outside of India and they claim that they are not amenable to Indian Laws. It was pointed out that the website allows its users to select its server location as in India and it will be shown as if the user is using it from India.

Further, it was said that several bomb threats to schools in India were sent using this email service. It was informed that Russia and Saudi Arabia have banned Protonmail services in their countries. Thus it was claimed it is a National security threat. It was also submitted that under the Information Technology Act and Rules, the servers should be in the Country or the country should access the servers.

On the issue of maintainability of petition before the High Court the counsel relied on Section 69 of the IT Act to say that the High Court has powers to issue directions for banning and it is not an alternate remedy but a parallel remedy.

Finally, it was said, “We as a country do not allow anyone to operate in this country where the law enforcement agencies do not have an access, unless you are not compliant with Indian laws you are not ready to give servers access, you cannot operate in India.”

Additional Solicitor General Aravind Kamath appearing for the Union of India submitted that “We have a mutual agreement of assistance between India and Switzerland and a letter of rogatory can be issued by a competent criminal court on the request made by the investigating officer to seek information from another country. Thus the Ministry of Home Affairs or MEITY, cannot deal with the issue.”

Further in regards to the relief sought to ban the email service, he said, “If there is a direction given under the relevant rules by the High Court, we will comply with it.” Following this the court reserved its order.

Background

The petitioner company has filed a complaint with police in relation to the criminal and illegal usage of Proton Mail, by which its senior female employees have been repeatedly targeted through the issuance of e-mails containing obscene, abusive and vulgar language and sexually coloured and derogatory remarks along with Al generated deepfake images and other sexually explicit content.

It is claimed in the plea that the emails containing this content were issued to a large number of its staff, associates, vendors and competitors, resulting in irreparable reputational and psychological harm to the concerned employees.

Further, it is contended that despite the registration of the FIR on 09.11.2024, no effective steps were taken by the police to identify the accused person(s), compelling the company to move the Jurisdictional Magistrate with an application to monitorthe  police investigation. On being directed by the court the police filed a status report indicating that no concrete or effective steps were taken and use of a Mutual Legal assistance arrangement between India and Switzerland, was not done.

The plea seeks for issuance of a direction to police to collect all necessary information and documents pertaining to the sender of the offending email, through the mutual legal assistance arrangements between India and Switzerland in a time-bound manner.

The plea further seeks that the police be directed to forthwith seek issuance of Letters Rogatory/legal request through the jurisdictional magistrate, to the Federal Office of Justice, Switzerland for supply of all relevant information and documentation pertaining to the sender of the offending email.

Case Title: M MOSER DESIGN ASSOCIATES INDIA PVT LTD AND State of Karnataka & Others

Case No: WP 2358/2025