India Pulls Telegram Offline Until June 22 — and the Block Spilled Into the UAE

India has ordered Telegram blocked through June 22 after investigators traced leaked national exam papers to channels on the platform.

The directive, issued through the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology under Section 69A of the IT Act, requires ISPs to drop traffic to Telegram's edge infrastructure. It is the latest in a years-long pattern of Indian content blocks aimed at messaging apps that resist data-sharing demands.

But the block did not stay inside India.

Telegram CEO Pavel Durov publicly accused Reliance Jio of BGP hijacking — announcing routes for Telegram IP space that Jio does not own, then black-holing the traffic. Users in the UAE, parts of Southeast Asia, and transit networks peering with Jio reported the app failing to connect, hanging on "Connecting…", or dropping media downloads mid-transfer.

BGP route leaks of this kind are not new. They are, however, rarely framed by the originating carrier as deliberate enforcement of a domestic court order. If Durov's characterisation holds up in routing telemetry from RIPE NCC or Cloudflare Radar, it would put Jio in the awkward company of carriers previously called out for accidental global outages — except this one wasn't accidental.

The trigger is straightforward enough. India's Central Bureau of Investigation has been working leaks tied to the NEET-UG medical entrance exam and other competitive tests, where answer keys and question papers surfaced in paid Telegram groups hours before candidates sat down. Telegram's near-zero moderation of large private channels, plus its refusal to hand over user data to Indian law enforcement, made it the obvious pressure point.

What the order does not do is reach Telegram's protocol itself. MTProto traffic tunnelled through a third-party proxy still reaches Telegram's data centres, because the block is implemented at the IP and SNI level rather than via protocol fingerprinting. That is why MTProto proxies — small relays advertised by volunteers and, increasingly, by Telegram itself through the @MTProxybot — restore service for most users in blocked regions within seconds of being configured under Settings → Data and Storage → Proxy Settings.

A VPN terminating outside India or the UAE works equally well, with the usual caveat that UAE law restricts VPN use for accessing blocked services.

What affected users should do

• If you rely on Telegram for 2FA codes or business comms, move those flows to a channel that isn't sitting behind a national block. SMS or an authenticator app will do.
• If you're in the UAE and the app is dead, check Telegram's official @MTProxybot for a working proxy before assuming your account is compromised.
• If you administer a channel that touches Indian users, expect the block to be renewed past June 22. Plan for a mirror on Signal or a web archive.

No regulator outside India has commented. Routing data over the next 48 hours will determine whether this becomes a diplomatic problem for Jio or quietly disappears.