India’s top cybercrime watchdog has ordered GitHub to remove Bitchat, the offline messaging app created by Block CEO and bitcoin advocate Jack Dorsey, as anti-government protesters in Delhi adopt mesh networking tools to communicate over repeated internet shutdowns.
India’s Cyber Crime Coordination Centre, part of the Home Ministry, issued the order on Thursday night under Section 79(3)(b) of the IT Act, naming three GitHub repositories linked to Bitchat and giving the platform three hours to disable access.
The notice, reviewed by CoinDesk, says that the app allows anonymous communication without registration, phone numbers or centralized registration, and that its architecture “significantly prevents interception, attribution and legal investigation by law enforcement agencies.”
Bitchat is a decentralized messaging app that transmits encrypted messages between phones over Bluetooth mesh networks, without the need for internet, servers, or accounts. Dorsey released it as open source software in July 2025.
Bitchat is designed to transmit bitcoin transactions offline, passing them from phone to phone over the mesh until a device with connectivity transmits them to the network, a design intended to keep payments alive during blackouts, disasters or state-imposed shutdowns.
