India has removed Bitchat from app stores following a MeitY request under Section 69A of the IT Act. The offline messaging app uses Bluetooth mesh networking and encryption, making it difficult for authorities to trace communications. But removing it from stores may not stop existing users from using the technology
India officially removed the offline chatting app, Bitchat, from app stores on Saturday (October 3). The app’s developer and X co-founder Jack Dorsey announced the decision on X, saying, “The Government of India officially removes Bitchat from the app store.”
The decision came after a demand by India’s Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) under Section 69A of the Information Technology Act, 2000. The notice shared by Dorsey said the app contained content that was illegal in India. However, it was not clarified what kind of content was inappropriate.
But what is Bitchat, and why is everyone talking about it? Let’s find out.
What is Bitchat, and how does it work without the internet?
Bitchat, developed by Jack Dorsey, is a peer-to-peer and decentralised messaging app. It uses Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) to connect with people rather than cellular networks or Wi-Fi. This simply means that when two users are physically close to each other, their phones can connect directly via Bluetooth, and they can message each other without internet.
Bitchat primarily works using a mesh system. A message does not necessarily have to travel directly from the sender’s phone to the receiver’s phone. The phones nearby can act as relay points by passing the message from one device to another. This creates a local chain or “mesh” of connected devices.
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Bitchat, developed by Jack Dorsey, is a peer-to-peer and decentralised messaging app. It uses Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) to connect with people rather than cellular networks or Wi-Fi. Representational image/Pixabay
Reports put the approximate direct device range at around 30-100 metres, depending on conditions and devices. Hence, if person A cannot directly reach person C, but person B is between them, then the message will travel using B’s device to C’s. There is also no requirement for a conventional mobile number or mandatory user registration.
Moreover, Bitchat is different from traditional messaging services where a company’s servers sit in the middle of communication. This means other users can not read the sender’s message. It’s encrypted. Bitchat’s decentralised design means there is no central company server storing all the conversations. The lack of central infrastructure is one of Bitchat’s biggest privacy advantages. But it is also a concerning part for the government.
How did Bitchat become popular in India?
Dorsey introduced Bitchat in India in July 2025. He said it was a project to experiment with Bluetooth mesh networks, message relays, and encryption. But the app exploded in the country a year later.
In July 2026, a massive student protest took place at Delhi’s Jantar Mantar demanding the resignation of the then-education minister of India, Dharmendra Pradhan, over the Neet paper leak case. Authorities repeatedly suspended mobile internet services around the protest area. The suspension was reportedly intended to restrict communication.
Protesters started looking for ways to communicate without internet, and then they found Bitchat. Between July 17 and July 23, India accounted for around 85 per cent of Bitchat’s global downloads. In the previous month, the number was only one per cent. Bitchat was downloaded more than 91,000 times in India over five days. Bitchat’s daily active users in India subsequently crossed 330,000. Then what was the problem?
Bitchat gained popularity in India during the Gen-Z protests at Jantar Mantar calling for the resignation of the education minister in July. File image/AFP
Why did India remove Bitchat from app stores?
India launched a crackdown on Bitchat on July 23, 2026. The Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C), under the Ministry of Home Affairs, directed GitHub to disable access to three Bitchat repositories. The government said the app’s technical architecture “significantly impedes lawful interception, attribution and investigation”.
The concern was about the architecture of such a chatting app rather than one specific app. As the app does not require conventional user registration or phone-number verification, it becomes difficult to probe and identify who was communicating with whom. The lack of centralised logs also means investigators cannot simply approach a messaging company’s central database for communication records.
This was concerning as the app had chances of being misused by criminal groups. The July I4C order said that Bitchat can be misused by terrorist organisations, cybercriminals and other unlawful groups. The government also said that the decentralised communication could potentially be used to coordinate violent protests, spread misinformation, and can facilitate criminal conspiracies.
On Saturday (October 3), Apple officially removed Bitchat from its Indian app store. The app is also unavailable on the Google Play Store. Apple’s notice said the removal followed a request from MeitY under Section 69A of the IT Act. The notice said the app contains content that is illegal in India, but the government did not specify what content was the problem. It also did not publicly explain which specific Section 69A ground MeitY relied upon.
Does Bitchat have no central ‘kill switch’?
Conventional messaging apps like WhatsApp depend heavily on central infrastructure. Which means if a government blocks a company’s servers, domains, IP addresses or app distribution, it can substantially disrupt the service. But that was not the case with Bitchat. There is no single central infrastructure that can simply be switched off to stop every copy of Bitchat from communicating.
Senior policy counsel Namrata Maheshwari of Access Now, a global nonprofit organisation that fights for human rights in the digital age, described the implication clearly: because there is no central server or database, there cannot be a central “kill switch” for the already-installed application.
Removing the app from app stores stops new users from downloading it. But it does not automatically delete the app from phones where it’s already installed. The existing users can still use the app.
A privacy tool or headache for law enforcement?
Bitchat is beyond surveillance. The users do not need to provide a phone number to communicate. The messages are encrypted. It’s a haven for privacy advocates. The app is useful during internet shutdowns, natural disasters, network outages, crowded events, and in all situations where internet connectivity is unavailable. The app can be useful to journalists, protesters, emergency responders, and ordinary users as well. But law enforcement sees a problem: traceability.
Authorities argued that such technology could potentially allow people to communicate despite legally imposed internet restrictions. This becomes concerning during riots, terrorism, organised crime, or public disorder, when authorities may impose communication restrictions.
But digital rights groups have challenged the government’s approach. The Internet Freedom Foundation argued that the government was effectively targeting the capabilities of the technology. It suggested the government identify specific unlawful content. The group criticised the idea that the mere possibility that a communication tool could be misused should not automatically make the tool itself illegal.
Can you actually stop an app that doesn’t need the internet?
Removing Bitchat from app stores is not the same as killing the technology behind it. The October 3 decision only restricts new users from downloading the app, but people already having the app on their devices can still use it.
Also, Bitchat is open source. This means the code can potentially be copied, examined, modified, and redistributed. After the GitHub action in July, multiple reports said that the code could be mirrored elsewhere. A Financial Express report said that developers had copied the codebase to alternative repositories and that forks and sideloading could allow distribution outside official app stores.
A fork is essentially a separately developed version of an open-source project based on its existing code.
Hence, even if Bitchat disappears from app stores, the technology is still there, and more apps can be created.
With input from agencies