Host pulls down Veteran journo’s website overnight; no prior notice
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New Delhi: Veteran journalist Paranjoy Guha Thakurta's website and all its subdomains have been taken offline by web hosting company Hostinger without prior notice, days after Indiabulls founder Sameer Gehlaut secured an ex parte court order seeking the removal of a seven-year-old article. The journalist has described the move as an alarming instance of censorship through hosting providers.
The suspension on October 28 wiped out paranjoy.in, a 12-year-old digital archive of Guha Thakurta's journalism, books and documentary work, along with subdomains including media.paranjoy.in and adanifiles.paranjoy.in.
According to Guha Thakurta, Hostinger acted on an abuse complaint categorising the website as a fraud or scam, without notifying him or giving him an opportunity to respond. He said the provider did not cite any court order when it disabled the entire hosting account. He also pointed to VirusTotal and Google's Safe Browsing checks conducted that morning, which reportedly found no malicious or unsafe content on the websites.
The dispute stems from a NewsClick article published on September 30, 2019, examining alleged financial irregularities involving Indiabulls Housing Finance and Gehlaut's political connections. Indiabulls filed a criminal defamation complaint in March 2020 against NewsClick and the journalists associated with the report.
On October 24, 2026, Gehlaut and Indiabulls Nests Limited obtained an interim injunction directing removal and de-indexing of the article from paranjoy.in. A separate complaint subsequently led Google to block the specific URL from its Indian search results.
The complaint reportedly targeted 52 URLs across news organisations and social media platforms. Guha Thakurta said most of the linked reports remain accessible, while Hostinger's action erased his entire website and unrelated archives. He is challenging the court order and the suspension of hosting.