HC begins hearing on Proton Mail's appeal against proceedings to block it in India

Time of India

15 hours ago

The Centre on Tuesday informed a division bench of the Karnataka high court that proceedings under the Information Technology Act were on to block Proton Mail in India.A division bench comprising acting Chief Justice V Mameswar Rao and Justice S M Joshi heard a writ appeal by Proton Mail challenging the single-judge order to ban its services in India.Additional Solicitor General Arvind Kamath informed the bench that the Centre had initiated proceedings under Section 69A IT Act, 2000. The proceeding was going on, but the mail service had not yet been blocked. A government committee will take the final call, he said.Advocate Manu Prabhakar Kulkarni, appearing for Proton, urged the court to direct the government not to 'precipitate' action against Proton Mail. He added that if the block order was passed, no one in India would be able to use the mail service.The High Court had in April directed the Centre to take steps to block the Switzerland-based Proton Mail in India after security threats were flagged by an affected company.Justice M Nagaprasanna passed the judgment on a petition from 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.The court issued the direction to the Centre to act under Section 69A of the IT Act, read with Rule 10 of the Information Technology (Procedure and Safeguards for Blocking for Access of Information by Public).The petitioner had sought relief after unidentified miscreants sent vulgar, sexually coloured and obscene emails about its employees to its client as well as other employees, causing widespread reputational damage.The company informed the court that although his client had filed a police complaint to investigate the vulgar emails sent about its employee using Proton Mail, the law enforcement agencies were helpless, as Proton Mail had declined to share details of the senders of the email.The judge had asked the Centre to block the offending URLs till such time steps were initiated to block the mail.