Delhi HC Orders Takedown of Six Deepfake Videos of Rajya Sabha MP Raghav Chadha
Justice Subramonium Prasad confines the MP's suit to defamation after personality rights arguments were withdrawn, and restrains six explicit AI-generated videos out of fifty-two examined.
The Delhi High Court has partly allowed an interim injunction application filed by Rajya Sabha Member of Parliament Raghav Chadha against unidentified persons described as “Ashok Kumar / John Doe” and several intermediary platforms, over AI-generated deepfake videos targeting him. Justice Subramonium Prasad, deciding I.A. 14417/2026 in CS(OS) 466/2026 on July 1, 2026, directed Meta Platforms and another intermediary defendant to take down URLs linked to six specific documents out of fifty-two examined in the suit. The order came after the plaintiff's senior counsel dropped the personality rights plank of the case at the court's prompting, leaving only the defamation claim for adjudication. The court held that most of the impugned content was satirical political commentary a public figure must tolerate, but found six items crossed into vulgar and profane territory.
An MP's Suit Over AI-Generated Deepfake Content
Chadha, currently a Rajya Sabha member from Punjab and among the youngest members of that House, filed CS(OS) 466/2026 along with six connected applications. He had earlier served as a Delhi MLA from Rajinder Nagar between 2020 and 2022 and as Vice-Chairman of the Delhi Jal Board, where he worked on water management and infrastructure policy.
According to the plaint, around April 2026 the plaintiff discovered derogatory campaigns using AI and machine learning to generate hyper-realistic audio-visual deepfakes duplicating his face and mannerisms to portray him negatively. The plaintiff's case links the timing of these campaigns to his defection, along with other AAP parliamentarians, to the BJP.
The suit sought a permanent injunction against misappropriation of his personality and publicity rights, restraint against impersonation and voice cloning, takedown of infringing content across platforms, and damages for reputational and political harm. The application under Order 39 Rules 1 and 2 of the Civil Procedure Code sought interim reliefs mirroring these prayers, including ex-parte restraint on Defendant No. 1, takedown directions to Meta Platforms, Inc. (Defendant No. 2) and two other intermediary defendants, disclosure of Basic Subscriber Information and IP logs to unmask the uploaders, and blocking directions to the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology and the Department of Telecommunications, arrayed as Defendants No. 5 and 6.
Personality Rights Claim Dropped, Case Narrows to Defamation
Before examining the merits, the court made a prima facie observation that the plaint, as drafted, did not actually pertain to protection of personality rights. The judgment explains that personality rights entail an individual's autonomy to permit or deny exploitation of their name, image, or likeness, and that establishing infringement requires showing that unauthorised use of these attributes would cause confusion or a perception of endorsement.
When the court put this to Senior Advocate Rajiv Nayar, appearing for the plaintiff, he confirmed that personality rights arguments would not be pressed, and that reliefs would be confined to defamation. The court accordingly disregarded prayers (a), (b), (c) and (g) of the application, all of which related to personality rights, and restricted its inquiry to whether a prima facie case of defamation was made out.
The scope of the hearing was further narrowed by an earlier order dated May 21, 2026, which had confined arguments to Documents No. 1 to 52 annexed to the plaint. The July 1 order deals only with those documents.
The Bonnard Principle and the Public Figure Standard
The court set out the settled three-part test for temporary injunctions: prima facie case, balance of convenience, and irreparable injury not compensable in money. It then turned to the higher threshold applicable when a plaintiff seeks to restrain publication before trial.
The judgment invokes Bonnard v. Perryman, [1891] 2 Ch 269, for the principle that unless an alleged libel is proven untrue, no wrong is committed, and applies the Supreme Court's endorsement of that principle in Bloomberg Television Production Services India Private Limited v. Zee Entertainment Enterprises Limited, 2