India, April 26 -- Continuing its legal tussle with the Indian government, Meta-owned messaging platform WhatsApp told the Delhi High Court that it would end its India operations if the platform was forced to break its message encryption.

WhatsApp counsel made the assertion during a hearing on the platform's plea challenging a provision of IT Rules, 2021 for social media intermediaries, which require them to identify the first originator of information to a court or other competent authority.

"As a platform, we are saying if we are told to break encryption, then WhatsApp goes," its counsel Tejas Karia reportedly said.

He said that WhatsApp users use the messaging platform because of the privacy it assures and for the end-to-end encrypt...