New Delhi: The Wire’s Instagram account was temporarily blocked in India for nearly two hours on Monday evening, February 9. The account, which has over 1.3 million followers, is among the country’s most popular social media handles for news, analysis, satire, humour, and commentary.
Users attempting to access The Wire’s Instagram page on Monday evening were met with a message stating that the account was “not available in India … because we complied with a legal request to restrict this content.” Those using VPNs or accessing the account from outside India were able to view it without issues.
When contacted, officials from the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (MIB) stated that they had not blocked the account. Informally, The Wire learned that the ministry had requested Meta, Instagram’s parent company, to block a 52-second satirical cartoon posted by The Wire. Meta reportedly blocked the entire Instagram handle of The Wire in error. By 8:30 pm on Monday, access to the main account was restored, although the cartoon remained inaccessible. Facebook, where the cartoon was also posted, continues to block access to the content in India.
Under India’s IT laws, the ministry is required to notify publishers in advance if it intends to block specific content. The cartoon in question was posted on Instagram, Facebook, and X at 6:30 pm on February 7, but The Wire has not received any written communication regarding its restriction. On February 10, the cartoon was additionally blocked on X, with the platform displaying a notice that the post from @thewire_in had been “withheld in India in response to a legal demand.” An embedded video of the cartoon remains accessible on X, and it can also be viewed on YouTube and BlueSky.
This is not the first instance of The Wire facing content restrictions. In May 2025, the website was arbitrarily blocked for a full day. Access was restored only after the Ministry ordered the deletion of a story reporting CNN’s coverage of Pakistan’s claim to have shot down an Indian Rafale jet during Operation Sindoor. The Ministry’s email, received on May 9, 2025 at 9:41 pm, stated that the block was due to technical limitations: HTTPS websites could only be blocked in full, not on individual sub-pages. The Wire was requested to take “appropriate action” regarding the content and report back, enabling the Ministry to unblock the website.
Following the latest incident, The Wire has written to both the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting and Meta to seek clarification on what it describes as a “random act” of blocking a widely followed and informative account without prior notice.