India could ban Telegram for role in criminal activities: Report

India could ban Telegram on charges that the instant messaging app is being used for criminal activities including gambling and extortion. The legal action would be taken depending on the results of an investigation currently being conducted by the Indian Cybercrime Coordination Centre (I4C), under the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) and the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY).

The government’s investigation comes in the wake of Telegram founder and CEO Pavel Durov being arrested in Paris on August 24, following a preliminary police investigation in France. The 39-year-old billionaire Durov is said to be detained in Paris reportedly owing to the app’s lack of content moderation and, in turn, failure to prevent criminal activities.

In India, Telegram has more than five million registered users and the company is in compliance with the country’s Information Technology (IT) rules, which makes it mandatory that all social media platforms must have a chief compliance officer, a nodal officer and publish a compliance report every month.

However, Cybercrime authorities face a specific problem with Telegram. The app has no physical presence in the country, so obtaining a report or data is a complex issue for the Indian government. The probe by the Government of India will concentrate on P2P (peer-to-peer) chat exchanges on Telegram featuring Indian users, to establish if any criminal activity has taken place, a Moneycontrol report said.

Durov’s net worth is $15.5 billion, according to Forbes, and as of August 25, 2024, the Russian billionaire was the 120th richest person in the world. His position as co-founder and chief executive officer of Telegram Messenger Inc wealth mostly accounts for his wealth. Apart from Telegram, Durov is also co-founder of the social networking site VK (short form of the Russian name VKontakte, which means InContact). Last year, the weekly magazine Arabian Business called him the Most Powerful Entrepreneur in Dubai while in 2022, Forbes described him as the richest expat in the United Arab Emirates.

Durov flew in from Azerbaijan on his private jet when he was arrested. Since 2021, he has held citizenship of four nations, besides one of the European Union.