Blocked Then Restored: Reuters, TRT & Global Times

By Sulagna Halder 

New Delhi, 7 July 2025:

The Indian government blocked temporarily the official account of three international media houses Reuters, TRT World and Global Times on X (the previous Twitter) and reinstated these accounts later in the day, amid high level scrutiny as well as a technical goof up.

On late Saturday, those trying to access the handles received a now familiar message saying “Account withheld due to a legal complaint.” The Ministry of Electronics and IT (MeitY) subsequently explained that there was no legal order to block such accounts. The Government of India has not asked to suppress Reuters handle... We are in constant contact with X to sort the issue out,” said a spokesperson with MeitY, but the same was doubled about the other two networks.

It is assumed that the event is an aftereffect of a directive issued in May in the course of Operation Sindoor, which instructed to block more than 8,000 X accounts associated with non friendly countries. X seems to have applied that outdated order on these media outlets mistakenly, even though they should not apply it in the first place just because of the existence of that outdated order. A source close to them interiorly justified their first block by stating they had made an error there and that after Centre had connected to X; they gained access back very quickly.

By Sunday evening the accounts were reinstated on X. Reuters had received a ticket on X stating that access had been reinstated after the problem was resolved. In the same way, TRT World and Global Times recovered their audience in India, whereas Xinhua still has not been released, and its status is still the same.

The episode puts emphasis on the disputes of national security and press freedom. It also highlights the possible consequences of overbroad law orders being imposed within social sites. X has asserted that the account withholding is done based only on genuine legal requests according to the local law, not on self will.

Although the problematic block was quickly corrected, it spurs the question of unintended implications of sweeping digital policy in its fight against misinformation. At the moment, the accounts have been made active and are undergoing text checks, yet Xinhua has been blocked. Those spectating will be interested to know whether India will clean up its rules to prevent repetitions of such mistakes.