April 26, 2024: WhatsApp informed the Delhi High Court on Thursday that the popular Meta-owned messaging platform will "exit India" if it is forced to break encryption of messages.

Appearing for the messaging platform, lawyer Tejas Karia told a bench of Acting Chief Justice Manmohan and Justice Manmeet Pritam Singh Arora, “As a platform, we are saying, if we are told to break encryption, then WhatsApp goes.” He added, “We will have to keep a complete chain, and we don’t know which messages will be asked to be decrypted. It means millions and millions of messages will have to be stored for a number of years”.

As per sources, this came after the High Court listed for hearing on August 14 petitions by WhatsApp LLC and its parent company Facebook Inc, now Meta, challenging the 2021 Information Technology (IT) rules for social media intermediaries requiring the messaging app to trace chats and make provisions to identify the first originator of information.

The Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021 were announced by the government on February 25, 2021 and required large social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp to comply with the latest norms.