India erases Bitchat: Dorsey's offline messenger wiped from app stores as ISPs block its site

NEW DELHI: Jack Dorsey's Bitchat, the decentralised messaging app designed to work without an internet connection, has disappeared from Apple's and Google's app stores in India — and its website has gone dark across Indian internet providers — after the Union government ordered its removal. Dorsey revealed the takedown on Saturday, posting on X a notice from Apple's App Review team. "Government of India officially removes bitchat from the App Store," he wrote. The notice said India's Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) had issued the demand under Section 69A of the Information Technology Act, 2000 — the provision the government uses to order online content blocked. Apple told Dorsey the app "includes content that is illegal in India," without specifying what that content is, and advised him to seek details from MeitY directly. The app remains available on app stores outside India, but Apple said access through its TestFlight beta service would also be blocked in the country, and public test links would stop working. TechCrunch verified on Saturday that Bitchat could no longer be downloaded from Google Play in India, and that the app's website was inaccessible across multiple internet service providers. It remains unclear whether Google and the ISPs received the same government direction. Apple, Google and MeitY did not respond to requests for comment. Launched in July 2025, Bitchat is open-source and uses Bluetooth mesh networking to let nearby phones exchange encrypted messages — no cellular network, no internet, no central servers, no accounts. The design means it keeps working during internet shutdowns, natural disasters, or in areas with poor coverage — the exact conditions under which governments most often want communication to stop. This is the second strike against the app in India. In July 2026, the Home Ministry's cybercrime arm, the Indian Cybercrime Coordination Centre (I4C), ordered GitHub to take down repositories linked to the app. Digital rights advocates and legal experts questioned the legal basis for restricting software on the grounds of what it could do. I4C had argued that Bitchat's anonymous, account-free design prevented authorities from obtaining subscriber details during investigations. The October order answers one part of the rights groups' objection — it uses Section 69A, the provision they said was the law's designated blocking route — while sharpening the other: the state is now blocking not a post, a page or a video, but a protocol — a way for two phones to talk to each other when everything else is switched off.