According to TechRadar, authorities in the Indian-administered region of Jammu and Kashmir invoked a criminal procedure code on December 29 to impose a two-month blanket ban on unauthorized VPN use. Police have already penalized around 800 users, stopping citizens to search their phones for the now-illegal apps. The administration justifies the ban as necessary to stop malicious activities, restricting use to government-approved services only. Digital rights expert Raman Jit Singh Chima of Access Now calls the order “legally impermissible,” arguing that blocking an entire technology falls outside the scope of the emergency powers being used. This follows a pattern, as police pressured residents over VPN use during a 550-day internet shutdown that began in August 2019.
Why this is a big deal
Look, VPNs aren’t just for watching geo-blocked Netflix. In regions with heavy censorship and surveillance, they’re a basic tool for secure communication and accessing uncensored information. So when a government starts prosecuting people for having an app on their phone, that’s a massive escalation. It’s moving from blocking a service to criminalizing the individual user. And the scale here is immediate—800 people already penalized in what seems like a matter of days. That’s not a theoretical threat; it’s active, in-person enforcement. It turns a digital privacy tool into a contraband item.
The broader context and risks
Here’s the thing: this isn’t coming out of nowhere. India has been tightening the screws on VPN providers for a while. Remember 2022? That’s when major companies like NordVPN, Proton VPN, and ExpressVPN pulled their physical servers out of the country because of a data retention law. The state has wanted a way to monitor this traffic for years. Now, in Kashmir, they’re just cutting to the chase with an outright ban. But Chima’s warning about the “two-month” timeframe is crucial. He says it’s likely a formality, and extensions are a real possibility. What starts as a “temporary” emergency measure has a nasty habit of becoming permanent.
Can they even do this?
Legally, it’s shaky ground. Chima’s “legally impermissible” critique hits at a key point: using broad criminal emergency powers to outlaw a whole class of technology is a huge overreach. It’s like banning all encrypted messaging because it *could* be used for crime. The procedural angle is where this might get challenged in court, as Chima urges. But in the meantime, the chilling effect is real. When an expert like him declines to give practical advice on accessing VPNs because of the legal risk, you know the atmosphere is severe. It puts everyday people in an impossible spot: choose between relative digital safety or potential prosecution.
What happens next?
The immediate battleground is the courts. Legal challenges are probably the only way to roll this back, as local reports indicate the crackdown is intensifying. But there’s also the cat-and-mouse game of technology. Providers recommend obfuscated protocols that disguise VPN traffic, and apps like Proton VPN have features to change their icon on Android. It’s a sign of how dystopian this gets—hiding an app’s icon to avoid police checks during a street stop. You can see the raw tension in online discussions where people share these experiences. Basically, this ban tests whether a government can successfully suppress a fundamental tool of digital autonomy. The outcome will resonate far beyond Kashmir’s borders.
