Bengaluru, April 30 -- The Karnataka high court on Tuesday directed the Union government to block "Proton Mail," an encrypted email service, based in Switzerland and available in India.

A single bench of justice M Nagaprasanna directed the government to "to issue proceedings in terms of Section 69A of IT Act 2008 read with rule 10 of the Information Technology (Procedure and Safeguards for Blocking Access Of Information By Public) Rules, 2009 to block Proton Mail."

The court's direction came on a petition filed by a Bengaluru based firm, M Moser Design, seeking a direction to the Union Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology to ban proton mail after its employees and clients received several emails through Proton Mail IDs wit...