Calcutta HC blocks Sabeer Bhatia video on Adani till 31 January, orders takedowns on YouTube, X and Instagram
Justice Aryak Dutt found the 36-minute film titled How Modi and Adani Stole India to be a dramatised narrative asserting facts that no authority has found, and held that a repost after the Government had it disabled showed a want of good faith.
The Calcutta High Court on 26 October 2026 restrained Sabeer Bhatia and everyone acting with him from publishing or sharing a video titled How Modi and Adani Stole India: The Friendship Files, and directed YouTube, X and Instagram to disable access to the video at 39 URLs listed in Adani Enterprises Limited's defamation suit. The ad-interim injunction runs till 31 January 2027 or until further orders, whichever is earlier. Justice Aryak Dutt, sitting on the Original Side, recorded that he was conscious a pre-trial injunction in a defamation action touching matters of public interest must be granted with great caution, and then set out five reasons why this case fell within the exceptional class.
A 36-minute video, 86,000 views in a day, and a repost after the block
Adani Enterprises, which has an office on Lord Sinha Road in Kolkata, sued for damages for defamation and for permanent and mandatory injunctions. Mr Bhatia, the first respondent, is described in the petition as the creator, owner and operator of the YouTube channel Bcubed (Breaking Boundaries with Sabeer Bhatia) and the X account @sabeer. YouTube, X and Instagram are respondents 2, 3 and 4. Respondents 5 and 6 are unidentified persons said to be uploading, republishing and coordinating circulation of the content.
The video, about 36 minutes and 9 seconds long, was uploaded on 9 October 2026 on Mr Bhatia's channel in collaboration with a YouTube channel called Shadow Citizens, and posted the same day on his X account. By the end of that day it had been viewed 46,134 times on YouTube and about 40,000 times on X. Officers of the company watched it at the Kolkata office that day, which the court accepted as prima facie publication within its jurisdiction; the plaint was filed with leave under Clause 12 of the Letters Patent and Order II Rule 2 of the Code of Civil Procedure.
Access to the original YouTube upload has since been disabled within India, apparently on a complaint by the Government under Rule 3(1)(d) of the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021. The company's case was that the video kept resurfacing anyway: Schedule A to the petition listed three re-uploads on YouTube, 30 on X and six on Instagram. Mr Bhatia himself was said to have reposted the video on X on 22 October 2026, after the original was disabled.
What the company asked for, and what it said it was not asking for
Senior Advocate Anirban Ray, leading a team of seven for the company, took the court through the transcription and translation of the video at pages 13 to 26 of the petition and the imputations pleaded at paragraphs 15 and 18. The title itself, he submitted, imputes that the company's group, in concert with the holder of a public office, stole India, and the video contains other allegations against the company. The statements were false, he said, and Mr Bhatia had suppressed material facts, including the payment of premium for several land projects. The company had received enquiries from investors and others, including a communication dated 12 October 2026. The right to reputation, he argued, is an integral part of Article 21.
Mr Ray was careful about the scope of the relief. The company, he said, did not seek to restrain constructive criticism of Government policy, of business concentration, or of its own commercial activity as such. The reliefs were confined to the video, its reproductions and the defamatory imputations in it. As for the platforms, he relied on Section 79(3)(b) of the Information Technology Act, 2000 and Rule 3(1)(d) of the 2021 Rules, under which intermediaries must remove or disable access to unlawful content on a court order. Ms Pragya Jain appeared for YouTube by video-conference.
The Bloomberg test and five reasons the court found it met
The judge began with the Supreme Court's decision in Bloomberg Television Production Services India Private Limited v. Zee Entertainment Enterprises Limited. Beyond the usual three-fold test of prima facie case, balance of convenience and irreparable injury, a court considering a pre-trial injunction in a defamation case must weigh the public's right to know and the chilling effect of such orders. An injunction before trial is to be granted only in exceptional cases where the content is prima facie malicious or palpably false, with reasons recorded, never mechanically.
Having considered the material, Justice Dutt formed the prima facie view that this case fell within that class, for five reasons. First, the video is not a news report or an account of proceedings; it is “a dramatized narrative, whose title expressly imputes theft”, with narration and visuals represented as factual. Second, the imputations that the company's group is complicit in, or has been shielded from accountability for, narcotics smuggling linked to terror funding, and that it procured police violence and a false prosecution against a farmer, are assertions of fact rather than opinion, and nothing before the court showed any finding by any authority to that effect. Third, the original upload had already been disabled within India on the Government's complaint. Fourth, the repost after that disabling “prima facie shows a want of good faith”. Fifth, the video repeatedly names Adani and the Adani Group and refers to the businesses the company carries on, so the imputations, though dramatised, are prima facie of and concerning the company.
On balance of convenience, the judge noted that the restraint is confined to one identified video, its clips and materially identical reproductions, and the imputations pleaded in paragraph 17 of the petition. Constructive criticism or truthful reporting on the company or on Government policy, backed by evidence, is not barred. Online content spreads quickly through reposts and re-uploads, injury to reputation from continued republication cannot be adequately compensated in money, and if the order were not passed now its purpose would be defeated by further dissemination before the respondents could be heard. The judge acknowledged that several Schedule A accounts belong to persons who are not parties, and confined the platform directions to those specific URLs.
Order
The ad-interim injunction, operating till 31 January 2027 or until further orders, has six limbs. The respondents and anyone acting under their authority are restrained from publishing, uploading or sharing the video or any clip, excerpt, shortened version or materially identical reproduction of it on any platform, and from making the defamatory statements set out in paragraphs 15 to 18 of the petition or similar statements. They must forthwith remove the video and any such clip from every account, channel and page they own or control, including two posts under the X uploads in Schedule A.
YouTube, X and Instagram must remove or disable access to the video at each Schedule A URL and disable the engagements, such as reposts, quote posts and shares, through which it can be reached there. Five X entries in the schedule, serial numbers 3, 6, 7, 8 and 12, are not URLs of specific posts; the company is to furnish the specific post URLs to the platforms, after which the same direction applies. The platforms must preserve subscriber information, registration details, IP logs at the time of upload and access logs for the listed accounts and URLs, and must disclose the basic subscriber information of account holders not identifiable from Schedule A in a sealed cover, by affidavit, within two weeks of communication of the order. They must not run advertisements on, or share revenue from, the listed URLs or the video, and must preserve records of any advertisement revenue already generated.
YouTube is also to inform the company of the identity of respondent 5 so that the plaint can be amended and served; service on respondents 5 and 6 was dispensed with for now, with liberty to implead them once identified, and the company may bring any further upload or repost on record by supplementary affidavit. The three platforms must each file an affidavit of compliance within two weeks, listing the URLs removed or disabled with the date and time. Affidavits-in-opposition are due within four weeks of service and the company's reply two weeks after that. The order records that it does not restrain constructive criticism or fair reporting on the company, the Adani Group or any Government policy otherwise than through the video, its reproductions or the pleaded statements, and that its observations are prima facie. The application is listed in the monthly list of January 2027 before the Regular Bench as an Adjourned Motion.