Anonymous India put its fight against censorship in high gear on Saturday when they hacked into the servers of Reliance Communications. People who have internet connections provided by the company could not access popular sites, and were diverted to a page with a strongly-worded message from Anonymous.

“We have proof that Reliance is blocking websites other that specified in court orders. That’s why we targeted Reliance,” Anonymous India told DNA. The group has so far been media-shy, preferring to operate in a shadowy manner, but it seems to have upped the ante following the actions of internet service providers (ISPs).

“We see this as a protest. A virtual dharna. Think of the defacing (of websites) as protest graffiti,” said Anonymous. “Today it is only people like us who can fight the government. Anyone else gets squashed, their protests ignored. We are an idea. You can’t kill ideas.”

Last week, the group had hacked the Supreme Court website in order to protest against the blocking of torrent sites as well as other online services like Vimeo and Dailymotion. The websites were blocked by internet service providers (ISPs) like Reliance Communications and Airtel among others following an order by the Madras High Court.

Following their action, Anonymous India’s Twitter account was suspended. The message from the group demanded that the suspended Twitter handle, @OpIndia_Revenge, be restored.In a press release, the group said that they had entered Reliance Communications’ servers and accessed the complete list of sites blocked by the ISP. “It contained the list of all Government-blocked sites. But it contained more too. It contained sites and URLs that neither the public nor the Government has even heard of… Has anyone of you heard of any court order or DoT (Department of Telecommunication) order blocking the Facebook pages of the Protesting AirIndia Staff (sic),” the statement said.

Reliance Communications refused to comment on the blocking of websites. “We have investigated the matter and confirm that all RCOM servers and websites are intact and have required preventive measures in place for intrusions,” an RCOM spokesperson said.

Meanwhile, till late Saturday night, users couldn’t access sites like Facebook and Twitter directly. But on the same page the group had provided links for users to access the sites they wanted to visit such as Facebook.

Anonymous India also announced that they were organising a protest on June 9, and released a YouTube video urging people to join them. When asked whether they would risk exposing themselves, Anonymous said, “Anonymous is a collective. There are some of us who haven’t broken any laws. You can’t say who among us are hackers. No one here knows the real identity of each other. So even if we protest, we protest as citizens of India. And on top of that we even don’t know what nationality the users here have.”

Anonymous India first made news last year when they took down National Informatics Centre’s website in order to show support for the anti-corruption protests by Anna Hazare and Baba Ramdev. This is, however, the first time they have issued a press release or interacted with the media.

Anonymous said that they were not in support of piracy. “We are individuals. Like you may or may not have downloaded torrents for films you wanted to see, so it is with us all.” What they are protesting against is the manner in which entire websites have been blocked instead of selective blocking of pages or files that indulge in piracy.