Amid CEO Pavel Durov's arrest, Telegram may be banned in India if...

Telegram CEO and founder, Pavel Durov, has been arrested in Paris over allegations that his messaging platform is being used for illicit activity such as drug trafficking and the distribution of child sexual abuse images. The messaging app may face more trouble, now in India, where it has 5 million registered users. The Indian government has launched an extortion and gambling probe against the company.

The popular messaging app is facing increasing scrutiny from the Indian government over its alleged role in facilitating criminal activities such as extortion and gambling, MoneyControl reported. The future of the app in the country will depend on the findings of the investigation. 

The probe is being conducted by the Home Ministry and the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY). Telegram has not issued a statement regarding the probe. The ministries are specifically looking into the involvement of Telegram in criminal activities such as gambling and extortion. The final decision to ban the app or not will depend on the outcome of the investigation.

READ | This mystery woman, touted to be 'Mossad agent', linked to Telegram CEO's arrest? Know details here

Telegram allows for one-on-one conversations, group chats and large 'channels' that let people broadcast messages to subscribers. Unlike rivals such as Meta's WhatsApp, Telegram's group chats allow as many as 200,000 people, compared to a maximum of 1,024 for WhatsApp. Experts have raised concerns that misinformation spreads easily in group chats of this size.