NEW DELHI, April 26 -- Meta-owned WhatsApp informed the Delhi high court that it would cease operations in India and exit the country if compelled to compromise its end-to-end encryption.

Addressing the court during the hearing of WhatsApp's 2021 petitions challenging a provision of the 2021 Information Technology Rules for social media intermediaries, the company's lawyer, Tejas Karia said: "As a platform, we are saying, if we are told to break encryption, then WhatsApp goes."

The contentious provision in question requires social media intermediaries to identify the first originator of information, posing a significant challenge to WhatsApp's encryption model.

Karia explained, "People use WhatsApp only because of its encryption. Now b...