The Indian government blocked 857 pornography websites weeks after the Indian Supreme Court declined a request to block access to online pornography. 

The New York Times reports the Indian government ordered Internet providers to block 857 pornography websites, according to a list made by anti-pornography activists. In a matter of hours, social media lit up with complaints from people who tried to visit the pornography sites. What makes it more interesting is the government seemed to have chosen a specific group of websites to block. According to the Internet providers, thousands of pornography websites has not been blocked.

A few weeks ago, the Supreme Court declined the Indian government's request to block access to pornographic sites. According to The Hindu, Indian Chief Justice H. L. Dattu discussed the reason why he decided to reject the request.

"Such interim orders cannot be passed by this court," Dattu said. "Somebody may come to the court and say look I am above 18 and how can you stop me from watching it within the four walls of my room. It is a violation of Article 21, a right to personal liberty."  

According to Bloomberg, lawyer and activist Kamlesh Vaswani petitioned the Supreme Court about blocking the websites. On the heels of the brutal gang rape of a 23-year-old in 2012, Vaswani said to the Supreme Court: "Nothing can more efficiently destroy a person, fizzle their mind, evaporate their future, eliminate their potential or destroy society like pornography. It is worse than Hitler, worse than AIDS, cancer or any other epidemic.

"It is more catastrophic than nuclear holocaust, and it must be stopped." 

Eventually, the Supreme Court rejected his petition. Vaswani then gave his list of porno websites to Pinky Anand, a former top lawyer from the Bharatiya Janata Party and delivered it to India's Department of Telecommunications.

Experts believe that this is the largest number of websites that the government has blocked at one time.  

It is not known how long the websites will be blocked.