Full Text
HIGH COURT OF DELHI
Date of Decision: 01st JULY, 2026 IN THE MATTER OF:
IN
14419/2026, I.A. 14420/2026, I.A. 14421/2026, I.A. 14422/2026
RAGHAV CHADHA .....Plaintiff
Through: Mr. Rajiv Nayar, Senior Advocate with Mr. Sataya Anand, Mr. Nikhil Aradhe, Mr. Amber Chaturvedi, Ms. Manjira Das Gupta and Mr. Naman Maheshwari, Advocates
Through: Mr. Varun Pathak; Ms. Radhika Roy;
Ms. Prasidhi Agrawal, Advs for Defendant No.2 - Meta Platforms, Inc.
Ms. Mamta Rani Jha, Mr. Rohan Ahuja, Ms. Shruttima Ehersa, Ms. Sanya Sehgal and Ms. Aiswarya, Advocates for D-4
Ms. Dimple S Arora (SPC) and Mr. Vanshul Pali (GP) along with Ms. Ayushika Mishra for Defendant NO. 5-6.
JUDGMENT
1. The present Application has been filed under Order XXXIX Rules 1 and 2 of the Code of Civil Procedure, 1908 [“CPC”] seeking the following reliefs: “(a) Pass an order of ex-parte ad-interim injunction restraining Defendant No. 1 (Ashok Kumar / John Doe), their associates, servants, agents, affiliates, holding companies, assignees, substitutes, representatives, group entities, their Help subscribers, employees, and/or persons claiming through or under them, from violating the Applicant-Plaintiff's Personality Rights and Publicity Rights by utilizing, reproducing, misappropriating, or imitating any facet of the Applicant-Plaintiff's persona, including but not limited to his (i) name, (ii) visual likeness and image,
(iii) distinct voice, (iv) signature oratorical cadence and manner of speaking, and (v) highly refined vocabulary, to create, publish, or disseminate any synthetic media, deepfakes, voice-cloned audio, or morphed videos, through the use of AI, Generative AI, Machine Learning, or any other technology, for any commercial, political, or malicious purpose, across any physical or virtual medium; (b) Pass an order directing Defendant Nos. 2, 3 and 4 (Intermediary Platforms) to forthwith take down, remove, permanently disable, and block access to all infringing content, including the deepfake videos, morphed images, Al-generated audio-visual content, bearing the Applicant's identity, presently available on their respective platforms, as specifically detailed in Schedule 1 of the Plaint, within a strict timeframe of 24 hours from the receipt of the order of this Hon'ble Court;
(c) Pass an order of injunction granting the Applicant the liberty to directly intimate Defendant Nos. 2, 3 and 4 regarding any new, mirrored, or future URLs/links hosting fresh deepfake content (as and when the Applicant attains knowledge of it) and / or identical or substantially similar infringing deepfake content, which are circulated with an objective of disseminating mis-information by misusing the Plaintiff's personality rights, with a corresponding mandatory direction to the said Defendants to take down and block access to such URLs within 24 hours of receiving such written intimation from the Applicant or his authorized representatives;
(d) Pass an order directing Defendant Nos. 2, 3 and 4 to disclose on affidavit, within a timeframe stipulated by this Hon'ble Court, the complete identity, registration particulars, Basic Subscriber Information (BSI), IP login details, phone numbers, and email addresses of the uploaders, creators, and registrants of the infringing accounts and URLs detailed in Schedule 1 of the Plaint, to effectively unmask the identity of Defendant No. 1; (e) Pass an order / direction to Defendant No. 2, 3 and 4 for blocking / taking down of various fake profiles/accounts which are repeatedly posting maliciously denigrating / defamatory Al generated content(s) and deepfakes on the platforms of the Defendants, upon the Applicant furnishing the relevant details of such pseudo / fake accounts URLs or links thereof, directly to Defendant No. 2, 3 and 4 from time to time, including fake profiles / accounts presently not in the knowledge of the Applicant; (f) Pass an order / direction to the Defendants No. 2, 3 and 4 to act upon information, links / URLs, fake account / profile details as furnished by the Applicant or his authorized representatives, expeditiously and without requiring fresh orders of this Hon'ble Court; (g) Pass an order directing Defendant No. 5 (Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology) and Defendant No. 6 (Department of Telecommunications) to issue necessary notifications, advisories, and blocking orders to all Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and Telecom Service Providers (TSPs) to forthwith block and disable access to any independent rogue / independent websites or URLs hosting the unauthorized deepfakes and synthetic media pertaining to the Applicant, upon being notified by the Applicant; and (h) Pass any such other and further orders in favor of the Applicant as this Hon'ble Court may deem fit and proper in the facts and circumstances of the present case.”
2. The following factual background emerges from a collective reading of the Plaint as well as the Application under adjudication: i. Plaintiff is a nationally recognized political leader, presently serving as a Member of Parliament in the Rajya Sabha representing the State of Punjab. He is amongst the youngest members of the Rajya Sabha, having emerged as a prominent public figure in the Indian politics. From 2020 till 2022, the Plaintiff previously served as a Member of the Delhi Legislative Assembly from Rajinder Nagar. He further served as the Vice- Chairman of the Delhi Jal Board, where he was associated with policy initiatives relating to water management and public infrastructure. ii. The Plaintiff has over the years cultivated immense goodwill, credibility and public trust, especially amongst young voters. He has also managed to build substantial public digital identity and reputation across various social media platforms (such as X, Instagram, Facebook and YouTube) enabling members of the electorate to closely follow contemporary political discourse, and he is well-recognized for his articulate public speaking, governance, and policy-related advocacy and active participation in parliamentary and public affairs. iii. In and around April 2026, the Plaintiff discovered various derogatory, demeaning and malicious campaigns orchestrated by unknown infringers (Defendant No. 1), who have allegedly used Artificial Intelligence [“AI”] and machine learning to generate hyper-realistic audio-visual deep-fake content wherein the Plaintiff’s face and mannerisms are being duplicated to portray him in a negative light. As per the Plaintiff, these campaigns specifically commenced after the Plaintiff, along with several other members of the Parliament from the Aam Aadmi Party, [“AAP”] defected to the Bharatiya Janta Party [“BJP”].
3. Plaintiff has approached this Court by filing the present Suit seeking, inter alia, (a) permanent injunction restraining the unauthorized misappropriation and exploitation of the Plaintiff's personality rights and publicity rights; (b) restraint against impersonation, voice cloning, AI generated maliciously denigrating/defamatory content, deepfake generation, synthetic manipulation, and publication of fabricated audio-visual content concerning the Plaintiff; (c) immediate/forthwith take-down and disabling access to all infringing content hosted on various digital and intermediary platforms; and (d) damages and other ancillary reliefs for the grave reputational, political, and personal harm caused to the Plaintiff.
4. At the outset, having perused the contents of the Plaint as well as the accompanying Application under adjudication, this Court is of the prima facie observation that the Plaint does not pertain to protection of personality rights of the Plaintiff in any manner. It is well settled that personality rights of individuals entail the right to control and protect the exploitation of one’s image, name, likeness or other attributes of the individual’s personality, in addition to the commercial gains that can be derived from the same. These personality rights can be located in the individual’s autonomy to permit or deny the exploitation of the likeness of other attributes of their personality. When the identity of a famous personality is used without their consent or authorization, it may lead to commercial detriment to the concerned individual. Courts, in such cases of unauthorized exploitation of one’s personality rights, cannot turn a blind eye and must protect the aggrieved party so as to avert any harm to them resulting from the said unauthorized exploitation.
5. Accordingly, in order to establish a case of infringement of personality rights, the Plaintiff must necessarily establish before a court that the misuse of their name, image, likeness and other elements of the Plaintiff’s persona clearly constitutes infringement, as the adoption of the aforementioned attributes such as name, image, signature, likeness, etc., without any authorization from the plaintiff, will inevitably cause confusion and create a perception of endorsement by the Plaintiff. As a necessary corollary, an interim injunction in such a case may only be obtained when it is proved that irreparable loss, damage and injury would be caused to the Plaintiff’s goodwill, reputation and prestige, if the interim injunction as prayed for is not granted immediately.
6. In all fairness, when this Court put the question to the learned Senior Counsel for the Plaintiff as to whether the Plaintiff would be pressing for protection of personality rights or not, the learned Senior Counsel for the Plaintiff submitted that he would not be pressing arguments pertaining to the Plaintiff’s personality rights, and would instead confine reliefs sought on the issue of defamation against the Plaintiff. In view of this, this Court deems it fit to disregard prayers (a), (b), (c) and (g) as mentioned in the instant Application, as they relate to the issue of personality rights of the Plaintiff, and determination of reliefs shall be confined to the issue of defamation.
7. As noted in the Order dated 21.05.2026, arguments in the instant Application were only confined to Documents No. 1 to 52 annexed to the Plaint. Accordingly, the present Order shall be confined to only those documents, to assess whether a prima facie case of defamation against the Plaintiff is made out herein or not.
8. Injunction is a judicial process by which a party is required to do or refrain from doing a particular act. Injunction is a nature of preventive relief to a litigant to prevent future and possible injury. Grant of injunction is a discretionary relief. It is well settled that before granting any temporary injunction, three essential ingredients are to be made out, i.e., (i) prima face case, (ii) balance of convenience and, (iii) irreparable injury which cannot be compensated in terms of money. It is well settled that if a party fails to make out any of the three ingredients, they are not entitled to a temporary injunction.
9. This Court reminds itself of the landmark English case law in Bonnard v. Perryman, [1891] 2 Ch 269, wherein the House of Lords shed light on the public interest implicit in free speech and observed that unless the alleged libel is proven untrue, no wrong is committed. Thus, until the falsity of the alleged libel is established, no right is deemed to have been infringed. It was held that a mere assertion of an intention to justify the allegations in order to successfully resist an interlocutory injunction to restrain the publication of a libel was sufficient to caution the Court in not granting injunctions. The aforesaid has come to be known as the Bonnard principle.
10. The Bonnard principle was applied by the Apex Court in the case Bloomberg Television Production Services India Private Limited &Ors. v. Zee Entertainment Enterprises Limited, 2024 SCC OnLine SC 426, wherein it was observed as under:
12. Similarly, this Court also recalls the following observation of Bramwell, B., in Kelly v. Sherlock, (1866) LR 1 QB 686, 689: “Whoever fills a public position renders himself open thereto. He must accept an attack as a necessary, though unpleasant, appendage to his office.”
13. The above two judicial opinions were affirmatively considered by the Apex Court in Kartar Singh v. State of Punjab, (1956) 1 SCC 692, while holding as under:
14. Further, in the case of R. Rajagopal v. State of T.N., (1994) 6 SCC 632, a reference by the Apex Court was made to the speech of Lord Bridge of Harwich in the case of Leonard Hector v. Attorney-General of Antigua and Barbuda, [1990] 2 A.C. 312, who observed that those who hold office in government and are responsible for public administration, must always be open to criticism. The Apex Court in R. Rajagopal (supra), while referring to the abovementioned judgment of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, observed that an attempt to stifle or fetter such criticism amounts to political censorship of the most insidious and objectionable kind. At the same time, the Apex Court also opined that it is no less obvious that the very purpose of criticism levelled at those who have the conduct of public affairs by their political opponents is to undermine public confidence in their stewardship and to persuade the electorate that the opponents would do a better job at it than those presently holding office. Therefore, statements made which are likely to undermine public confidence in the conduct of public affairs cannot but be viewed with utmost suspicion. The Apex Court in R. Rajagopal (supra) has observed as under:
15. The Apex Court in Amish Devgan v. Union of India and Others, (2021) 1 SCC 1 while referring to Subramanian Swamy v. Union of India, (2016) 7 SCC 221 has made the following observations:- “61. In Subramanian Swamy [Subramanian Swamy v. Union of India, (2016) 7 SCC 221: (2016) 3 SCC (Cri) 1], this Court referred to Charu Khurana v. Union of India [Charu Khurana v. Union of India, (2015) 1 SCC 192: (2015) 1 SCC (L&S) 161] wherein it has been ruled that dignity is the quintessential quality of personality and a basic constituent along with honour and reputation of the rights guaranteed and protected under Article 21. Dignity is a part of the individual rights that form the fundamental fulcrum of collective harmony and interest of a society. While right to speech and expression is absolutely sacrosanct in the sense that it is essential for individual growth and progress of democracy which recognises voice of dissent, tolerance for discordant notes and acceptance of different voices, albeit the right to equality under Article 14 and right to dignity as a part of Article 21 have their own significance.”
16. This Court in S. Charanjit Singh v. Aroon Purie, 1982 SCC OnLine Del 301 while relying on Kartar Singh (supra) has reiterated the above settled position as under:-
17. Conclusively this Court in Naveen Jindal v. Zee Media Corporation Ltd., 2014 SCC OnLine Del 1369 placing reliance on S. Charanjit Singh (supra) has made the following observations:-
19. I am also of the considered opinion that the view which has been taken by the Hon'ble Mr. Justice Sultan Singh in S. Charanjit Singh's case (supra) which is based on the view of the Apex Court in Kartar Singh's case (supra), is a more balanced view on account of the fact that a public person or a person holding a public office should not be so „thin skinned‟ or should be rather „thick skinned‟ so as to complain about the allegations or the averments or the write ups which are taking place against him in the media or are being telecast unless and until they are grossly defamatory per se. The publications may be inaccurate, not fully or substantially true or may be distorted or may be offending sensibilities of the person against whom such allegations are made or may be to his annoyance but that is not to be the ground to muzzle them altogether.
20. It is more so in a case when a person, holder of a public office or aspiring to become a member of an elected body is amidst the din of electioneering. It is a common knowledge that while the elections are on, all kinds of accusations and counter-accusations are bound to fly thick and fast in all directions of which a person must not complain unless and until the allegations against him are per se defamatory.”
18. Having noted that the standard of defamation that a public figure must establish is comparatively higher, this Court is constrained to render a prima facie observation that while some of the contents depicted in Documents NO. 1 to 52 annexed to the Plaint, do reek of malice, having a nature which maligns the reputation of the Plaintiff herein, however, the same cannot be stated for all the fifty-two (52) documents.
19. Before delving into the contents of the fifty-two (52) documents, this Court deems it fit declare that this Court in no way or manner endorses the use of AI to produce deepfake videos, morphed images, etc., when employed to harm the dignity of an individual which would strike at the very root of their fundamental rights guaranteed under the Constitution of India. In the same vein, this Court acknowledges the contemporary position that the use of AI has become an instrument for voicing opinions across social media platforms, which is fairly evident in the political context. In this context, this Court believes that at least till the time most of such content is not regulated by a stringent legislation, it becomes a judicial duty upon receipt of grievances such as those in the present Suit, to examine whether the use of AI has reached the threshold of infringing upon an individual’s fundamental right to dignity or not. Needless to state, a fair balance is to be struck with an individual’s freedom of speech and expression which is also granted under the Constitution of India.
20. Accordingly, this Court has perused the fifty-two (52) documents which are subject matter of this Application and relate primarily to political decisions taken by the Plaintiff. Majority of the allegedly defamatory content appears to be satirical expressions of the Plaintiff’s decisions in the political sphere, and such decisions are likely attract both bouquets and brickbats at the same time. As observed in a catena of judgments, a public figure should not be so thin-skinned so as to complain about any criticism of his decisions and such criticism ought to be viewed with humility.
21. However, keeping the above in mind, this Court is of the opinion that Documents No. 2, 8, 9, 11, 25 and 40 contain explicit content, which is profane and vulgar in nature, and fall outside the purview of harmless satirical humor. Consequently, the balance of convenience lies in restraining Defendant No. 1 from publishing the same content as mentioned in Documents No. 2, 8, 9, 11, 25 and 40, on any other social media platform, as well as directing Defendants No. 2 and 4 to take down the URLs associated with these specific documents.
22. With regard to the other documents, this Court observes that humor about change in political party alliances, governance, policies, etc. are a part and parcel of politics. Any action by a politician belonging to any political party will, in most, if not all circumstances, invite criticism from, upset, or create turmoil amongst, the general public or members from rival political parties, which may at times be expressed in the form of satirical humor. However, that does not automatically make such content offensive or defamatory. At the cost of repetition, public figures assuming such positions of power must accept being at the receiving end of the satirical humor as a necessary and inevitable aspect of their profession, though unpleasant.
23. With the above observations, this Court passes the following directions: i. The Defendants No. 2 and 4 are directed to take down the URLs associated with Documents No. 2, 8, 9, 11, 25 and 40 within a period of two weeks from the date of this Order till further Orders. ii. The Defendants No. 2 and 4 are directed to provide the Plaintiff with Basic Subscriber Information (BSI), IP logs of the accounts associated with the content mentioned in Documents No. 2, 8, 9, 11, 25 and 40 within a period of two weeks from the date of this Order. iii. Compliance of Order XXXIX Rule 3 of the CPC be made within a week from today.
19. List before the Court on 18.08.2026.
SUBRAMONIUM PRASAD, J JULY 01, 2026 Prateek/AP