Online messaging app WhatsApp has been blocked for 72 hours in Brazil following a court order by a judge based in Lagarto, Sergipe. 

Judge Marcel Montalvao handed over the temporary suspension to the service after WhatsApp refused to cooperate in a drug investigation. He ordered Brazil's top five mobile phone operators - Vivo, Claro, Nextel, TIM, Oi - to block WhatsApp for 72 hours. The ban began at 2 p.m. local time (1 pm ET) on Monday.

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The Facebook-owned mobile messaging service expressed disappointment over the court ruling.

"This decision punishes more than 100 million Brazilians who rely on our service... in order to force us to turn over information we repeatedly said we don't have," a statement from WhatsApp said.

This is the second time Brazil has blocked the popular chat app. The service was suspended for 48-hours by a Sao Paulo-based judge in December last year. In March, Judge Montalvao called for the arrest of Facebook's vice-president for Latin America, Diego Dzodan, for not cooperating in an investigation.

The Brazilian federal police, who launched the drug investigation five months back in Lagarto, asked Facebook for WhatsApp conversations of suspected drug traffickers. The company refused to share the information saying that they can't access the messages because of end-to-end encryption technology. WhatsApp recently adopted the technology to secure user privacy against surveillance.

WhatsApp is massively popular in Brazil with more than 100 million users. Nearly ninety percent of cell phone users in the country use the messaging service. 

TagsWhatsApp, Facebook, Brazil, blocked, court