This week, legal notices to digital rights groups Internet Freedom Foundation and Software Freedom Law Centre sparked an online storm, raising concerns over growing internet censorship in India.

But the notices appear to be part of an elaborate hoax that seems to have swept in not just the digital rights groups and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, but even the Delhi Police.

The controversy began on October 30 when the digital rights groups went public with purported legal notices they had received in the name of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the ideological parent of ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, asking them to stop documenting and opposing the government’s content restriction orders.

The RSS has not officially commented on the notices but Kanchan Gupta, an advisor to the information and broadcasting ministry, and Ratan Sharda, an author who is a member of RSS, were quick to deny on the social media platform X that the organisation had sent any such notices.

The digital rights groups then received communication from X, informing them that Delhi Police had sent an “illegal content report” asking for their posts and accounts to be taken down since they were defamatory of the RSS.

However, not only is the notice sent in the name of the RSS fake, a police official familiar with the case told Scroll that even the purported police communication to X is fabricated. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity since he is not authorised to speak to the press. Questions sent to Delhi Police’s official spokesperson remain unanswered at the time of publication.

A Scroll investigation found that it all began with an email address likely created on October 29, only six hours before the purported legal notices were sent to the digital rights organisations.

Legal notices

According to a statement issued on X by the Internet Freedom Foundation on October 30, the organisation had received an email the previous night from a sender who identified themselves as a lawyer named Gaurav Tiwari. Tiwari said that he was serving them a legal notice on the “instructions and authority from Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh”.

The notice accused the organisation of opposing government orders “to remove anti-national, provocative and misleading content”. It asked the IFF to stop doing so, and confirm within a week that it would comply.

Similar notices were emailed to the Software Freedom Law Centre, and a X account called Geo Blocked in India.

The Internet Freedom Foundation said that the purported notice was “legally deficient because it makes no material allegation and cites no illegality”.

The organisation pointed out that the notice did not explain why the RSS was taking exception on behalf of the government. Nor did it state which exact law had been violated.

Scroll contacted Sunil Ambekar, who heads the RSS’s communication department. There was no response at the time of publication.

The address mentioned in the notice, seen by Scroll, led to a flat in Bawana in outer Delhi. The RSS is headquartered at Keshav Kunj in central Delhi.

Scroll traced the address and the phone number in the notice to the Rashtriya Seva Sangh, which describes itself as “a national, religious and cultural organisation based on Vedic Sanatan Dharma”. Its website displays the Delhi address as its “national office”.

According to NGO Darpan, a government directory of NGOs, the Rashtriya Seva Sangh was registered in Nainital, Uttarakhand, in 2024.

According to the organisation’s website, its president is Himanshu Joshi. Joshi, 32, told Scroll that the Rashtriya Seva Sangh was distinct from the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, although he has also been associated with the BJP’s parent body.

However, Joshi said his outfit had not sent any legal notice to the Internet Freedom Foundation, the Software Freedom Law Centre and Geo Blocked in India. “I have checked with our legal cell and we did not file any such legal notice,” Joshi said. “We’ll take action against the person who has used our phone number and address.”

Mystery sender

To try to establish who had sent the legal notice to the digital rights groups, Scroll took a closer look at the email through which it was sent.

The email received by the Internet Freedom Foundation had been sent using Proton Mail, an encrypted email service, at 9.54 pm on October 29. Scroll analysed the email address using ProtOSINT, a Python program that helps investigate Proton email accounts.

The programme confirmed that the email address exists. By tracking its digital security key, it found that it was likely to have been created at 3.57 pm on October 29, 2026 – just six hours before the legal notice was sent.

The Delhi Police official who spoke to Scroll on the condition of anonymity described the email sent from this address as “fake”.

The police report

The matter did not end here.

On November 3, the Internet Freedom Foundation and Software Freedom Law Centre received two emails from X.

The social media platform said that it had “received requests from the Delhi police” on October 31 and November 2 alleging that 23 tweets on their X handles had violated Indian law – as had the handles themselves,

X enclosed a list of URLs which also included 16 tweets from accounts that interacted with the above tweets. The platform disclosed that the police had flagged these tweets in an “illegal content report” sent by Special Commissioner (Crime) Hargobiner Singh Dhaliwal.

The police’s reason for this report was also stated: “These two posts are defamatory towards the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh under the Section 356 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023 (BNS).”

In a series of tweets on November 4 and 5, the Software Freedom Law Centre posted the findings of its own investigation into the “illegal content report” sent by the Delhi Police to X.

It said that the allegation of criminal defamation in the report is “a non-cognizable offence which requires a court order for the police to initiate action”. It pointed out that the police had not cited an order in its report to X.

‘Fake email’

Both the Internet Freedom Foundation and the Software Freedom Law Centre wrote to the Delhi Police to confirm whether it had sent notices to X asking for their posts and accounts to be removed. In the absence of a response from the police, they moved the Delhi High Court on November 5, challenging the notices.

Later in the day, the Delhi Police official who spoke on the condition of anonymity told Scroll that the police had not filed the purported “illegal content report” against the Internet Freedom Foundation, the Software Freedom Law Centre and Geo Blocked in India.

The official added that the report sent to X had itself come from a fake email address purporting to be an official Delhi Police account.

The report, seen by Scroll, states the email address through which it was sent to X: “splcp-crime-dl@delhipolice.gov.in” – the address for Special Commissioner (Crime) Hargobinder Singh Dhaliwal. The Software Freedom Law Centre claims that this address was present on the Delhi Police’s directory till November 4, but an email sent to it that day bounced back with an error saying that it did not exist.

On November 5, the digital rights group said that the police directory had changed Dhaliwal’s email address to “splcp[dot]crime[at]delhipolice[dot]gov[dot]in”.

Citing a government notification from June 2026, the Software Freedom Law Centre added that Dhaliwal is not an authorised official to send such notices. The authorised officials include the Additional Chief Secretary (Home), Principal Secretary (Home), Secretary (Home) of the Delhi government, the Joint Commissioner of Police, IFSO, Special Cell, and select Joint Commissioners of Police and Additional Commissioners of Police.

The Software Freedom Law Centre also said that it also found that X’s dedicated form for law enforcement requests “had no mechanism to verify or authenticate the identity of the person submitting the request.”

This meant that anyone can file an “illegal content report” with X using any email address. The group added that it flagged this loophole to the social media platform, and it was promptly fixed.

Scroll emailed questions to X asking about this loophole – and seeking confirmation about the authenticity of communications attributed to it.

On November 6, X told Delhi High Court that the notices issued in the name of Delhi Police were sent by an imposter and that it had filed a police complaint regarding this.