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India Blocks Telegram Until June 22 Over NEET Exam Cheating
India blocks Telegram until June 22 over NEET exam fraud. How the platform's edit feature was used to fabricate paper leaks, and what it means for users.
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India's Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) has temporarily restricted access to Telegram in the country until June 22, 2026. The messaging platform must also disable its message-editing feature for Indian users through June 30.
The move targets alleged exam fraud tied to the NEET (UG) 2026 re-examination. The National Testing Agency (NTA) recommended the step, with operational support from the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C).
According to NTA, organized cheating networks used Telegram to sell fake access to exam papers, spread misinformation, and fabricate evidence of paper leaks. The agency said Telegram's edit feature let channel administrators modify old posts and attach actual question papers after the exam while retaining the original timestamp. That created misleading proof of a leak.
The I4C, acting on inputs from NTA and state police in Bihar, Gujarat, and Rajasthan, has already taken down multiple channels, groups, and bots linked to the networks. NTA listed channel names such as "PAPER LEAKED NEET", "Re-NEET 2026", "Private Mafia", and "REE NEET MAFIAA". Those channels demanded payments ranging from a few thousand to several lakhs of rupees from candidates and families in exchange for purported access to the re-examination paper. NTA reiterated that no such paper exists outside the secured examination chain.