India’s cybercrime watchdog has ordered GitHub to remove Bitchat, the offline messaging app created by Block chief executive and Bitcoin advocate Jack Dorsey, as anti-government protesters in Delhi adopt mesh networking tools to communicate through repeated internet outages.
The Indian Cybercrime Coordination Centre, part of the Ministry of Home Affairs, on Thursday evening issued an order 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 advisory, reviewed by CoinDesk, states that the app allows anonymous communication without recording, phone numbers, or centralized logging, and that its architecture “substantially impedes lawful interception, attribution, and investigation by law enforcement.”
Bitchat is a decentralized messaging application that relays encrypted messages between phones via Bluetooth mesh networks, requiring no internet, servers or accounts. Dorsey released it as open source software in July 2025.
Bitchat is designed to relay Bitcoin transactions offline, transmitting them phone-to-phone over the mesh until a connected device broadcasts them over the network, a design intended to keep payments alive during power outages, disasters, or state-mandated shutdowns.
