In an X post on June 16, 2026, Telegram CEO Pavel Durov alleged that Indian telecom operator Reliance was “sabotaging access to Telegram for millions of users OUTSIDE India (including the UAE)” through a “rogue method called BGP hijacking“. Durov claimed the disruption appeared intentional because Reliance had “ignored multiple reports” about the issue. This comes after the messaging app was restricted in India until the NEET re-examination by Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY).
He further suggested that the alleged sabotage “may be part of a competitive war”, pointing to Reliance’s relationship with Meta. Meta has a 9.99% stake in Jio, which it bought for $5.7 billion in 2020. The companies also announced a joint venture last year to build enterprise AI solutions, as well as a partnership this month to develop an AI data centre in Gujarat.
Additionally, Durov urged network operators to reject “unauthorised BGP announcements” from Reliance’s autonomous system, AS18101, to prevent route hijacks and maintain stable internet access. Calling the alleged conduct an “abuse of global Internet routing”, he also linked it to a “recent lobbying effort to ban Telegram in India”. However, Durov did not publicly provide technical evidence supporting the allegations.
What is BGP hijacking? The internet relies on the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) to determine how data travels between thousands of networks worldwide. Through BGP, network operators announce which IP address ranges they can reach, allowing routers to direct traffic to the correct destination. However, the system largely relies on trust and has limited built-in verification of routing announcements.
A BGP hijack occurs when a network announces routes that it is not authorised to advertise, causing internet traffic to follow an unintended path. As a result, users may experience outages, slower connections, or difficulty accessing online services. In some cases, traffic may be redirected; in others, it may simply be dropped or “blackholed”. Importantly, BGP hijacks can result from either deliberate actions or configuration errors. By contrast, a route leak occurs when legitimate routing information spreads beyond its intended scope, often because of a misconfiguration. Because routing announcements can quickly propagate across interconnected networks, both incidents can affect users far beyond the country where they originate.
Was this intentional? Anurag Bhatia, a network researcher and expert on BGP routing, disputed claims that the incident was intentional. Speaking to Medianama, he said: “I think it…
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