Delhi HC sees Doosra trading on Ganguly persona, but keeps it running on a Rs 2 crore guarantee
Justice Tejas Karia held that Doosra prima facie used the recognition and commercial appeal of Sourav Ganguly to draw audiences, yet declined to stop screenings of a film already released, ordering a disclaimer in English and Hindi and an unconditional bank guarantee of Rs 2 crore.
The film is about a girl called Tara growing up in small-town India. The Delhi High Court found that it keeps borrowing the career of a real man to tell her story: Sourav Ganguly, the former India captain.
On 6 November 2026 Justice Tejas Karia held that the makers of Doosra had, prima facie, used Mr Ganguly’s fame to attract audiences without his authorisation. He still refused to pull a film that has been in cinemas since 23 October.
Instead, the court gave the defendants two days to add a disclaimer to the film, and two weeks to furnish a bank guarantee of Rs 2 crore.
Two films, one release date
Mr Ganguly and a second plaintiff, which produces films, sued in the Delhi High Court on 21 October 2026, two days before Doosra was due to open. The second plaintiff holds the rights to a biopic, Dada – The Sourav Ganguly Story, under a Life Rights Agreement of 5 August 2021.
The agreement carries Rs 25 crore as fixed consideration, plus shares of box-office collections. The biopic’s first-look poster came out on 8 July 2026, with a release date of 14 May 2027.
The defendants are the production side of Doosra, including its director, and its distributor. The plaintiffs asked for an ad-interim injunction under Order 39 Rules 1 and 2 of the Code of Civil Procedure against exhibiting the film in any medium.
Seven years of emails
The first defendant and her husband had approached Mr Ganguly since 2017 about a film on how cricket changed India. In 2018 they asked for an interview, and an email of 6 June 2018 from his manager, Mr Partha Rudra, raised a concern.
The manager wrote that a biopic and a documentary on the same person could not easily go hand in hand. The first defendant replied on 16 June 2018 that the film was about India’s change in mindset and very different from a biopic.
The teaser came out in June 2019. The defendants went on to licence archival footage from the ICC, the BCCI and others. The film then stayed unreleased for seven years.
The trailer, notice and suit
The trailer appeared on 12 October 2026. The plaintiffs sent a legal notice on 17 October, and the defendants replied on 19 and 20 October that the film had been in the public domain since 2019.
On 23 October the court issued notice and asked for the film to be made available for viewing. The film opened that day.
Under an order of 29 October the defendants supplied a pen drive. The plaintiffs filed a table of objectionable scenes with timestamps, and the biopic manuscript in a sealed envelope.
Justice Karia viewed the film, the teaser and the trailer, and read the manuscript. He heard the parties on 2 November, reserved judgment, and considered written notes filed on 4 November.
The plaintiffs’ case
Mr J. Sai Deepak, Senior Advocate, led for the plaintiffs. He argued that the film uses Mr Ganguly’s persona and iconic moments, particularly the 2002 NatWest Final and his shirt-waving celebration at Lord’s, as commercial attractions without consent.
The trailer, he said, devotes about 25 to 27 seconds of its 2 minutes 12 seconds to him. The director, in an interview, had admitted that the original plan was a documentary on Mr Ganguly, and a ticketing app’s synopsis invoked the shirt-waving celebration.
Footage licences, he said, give copyright permission and nothing more; they are not a personality rights release. Parallels between Tara’s struggle over her sexual identity and an unwanted marriage, and Mr Ganguly’s setbacks, were drawn without his knowledge.
On delay, he said the teaser showed the film as a story about Indian cricket, while the trailer made Mr Ganguly the principal character. The plaintiffs acted within nine days of the trailer. In the alternative, he sought a deposit as security for damages and an account of revenues.
The defendants’ case
Mr Sourav Kirpal, Senior Advocate, appeared for defendants 1 to 6. He argued that the plaintiffs had waited nearly nine years, and that Mr Ganguly had known of the film since 2017. The right remedy, he said, was damages.
The film, he said, is a docudrama about Tara, not a biopic, and licensed footage of Mr Ganguly runs only four minutes. A disclaimer says the film does not cover his personal life. Personality rights, he argued, need an element of endorsement or association.
The footage was licensed by its copyright owners, including the BCCI, and he said the plaintiffs had conceded they do not own it. Relying on R. Rajagopal v. State of Tamil Nadu, he said public-record events, including sporting ones, are legitimate subjects of comment, and a ban would chill free speech.
The defendants had already released the film and signed agreements for worldwide release on OTT platforms, he added, so the balance of convenience favoured them. Mr Shivam Goel, for the distributor, said it had no role in content and asked that any deposit not be directed at it.
What the court was asked
The judge started from the central question of the application. In the court’s own words, the principal question was
“whether the use of Plaintiff No. 1’s identity, persona, likeness, reputation and achievements in the Impugned Film and its promotional material amounts to an infringement of personality and publicity rights of Plaintiff No. 1, warranting the grant of an interim injunction” (para 34)
The court first set out the right of publicity. It is the right to control and profit from one’s name, image or likeness, including the freedom to authorise or decline its commercial use.
Citing Titan Industries v. Ramkumar Jewellers, it named two elements: that the plaintiff owns an enforceable right in his identity, and that he is identifiable from the use.
Rights not in dispute, use in dispute
Both elements were met, the court held. Mr Ganguly is a celebrated cricketer and former captain of the national team, identifiable in the archival footage. Counsel for the defendants candidly accepted that his personality rights exist.
The fight, then, was over whether they had been infringed. The court separated acknowledging the right from admitting the infringement, and said the question was the use made of it.
Two stories running in parallel
From its viewing, the court found two narratives running side by side. One is Tara’s journey through family expectations, marriage and her personal identity. The other follows Mr Ganguly from his early international years through captaincy to the victory at Lord’s in 2002.
Tara’s conversations with her family keep returning to him, his performance and his attitude. He is therefore more than a figure in the background, the court said, and the references could not prima facie be called incidental to historical events.
Where inspiration ends and appropriation begins
The judge accepted that a creative work may draw on history and public figures, and that freedom of expression must be balanced against publicity rights. The court distinguished between using a public figure in a historical account and using the commercial appeal of his identity to draw interest to the work.
Where the second is the purpose, a mere appeal to freedom of expression does not justify taking that economic value. The judge then applied the test to the film.
He held that the parallel between Tara finding her voice before her father and Mr Ganguly’s cricket, his shirtless celebration or an Indian victory
“does not arise naturally from the circumstances of the respective narratives” (para 54)
Indian cricket had many other victories that could have inspired Tara, the court added. The link was created by the film, not found in the events.
Four minutes is not the test
The defendants had stressed that licensed footage of Mr Ganguly runs only four minutes. The court said duration cannot be the sole or deciding factor.
The table of timestamps, read with the viewing, did not show the narrative function or commercial weight of the use. What counted was how his identity is woven into the story, and whether the recognition attached to it is used to generate interest in the film.
The court also looked at promotion: the prominence given to his name and image, and the recurring references in the script. Taken together, it said, they showed prima facie an attempt to ride on the coattails of his persona without authorisation.
Why licences and old emails fell short
On the licences, the court said permission to include footage is different from authorisation to exploit a person’s identity. The licences from copyright owners concern the footage and exclude personal rights, so they cannot be read as Mr Ganguly’s consent.
The 2017 to 2019 correspondence did not show that he authorised the manner of use. Knowing about a proposed film is not authorisation for what finally appears in it.
Mr Rudra’s email of 6 June 2018, the court said, shows a contemporaneous concern about the overlap with the biopic. It therefore showed Mr Ganguly never gave consent to use his personality rights.
Delay, the teaser and the trailer
The court rejected the plea of delay and laches. Comparing the two promotional works, it found that the teaser, which included an interview excerpt of Mr Ganguly with Mr Virat Kohli, presented a story of Indian cricket seen through a young girl’s eyes.
The trailer and the film present a different narrative, centred on a member of the team who later became its captain and led it to victory in the NatWest Final. Awareness of the teaser, the court held, is not knowledge of how he would eventually be used.
The earlier emails concerned an interview in London for a documentary and the payment for it. At no stage, the court said, was Mr Ganguly told he would be the central character of a docufiction film. The correspondence showed that the first defendant knew of his rights, not that he acquiesced.
Public record and the seven-year pause
On R. Rajagopal, the court agreed that once a matter is on the public record, the right to privacy no longer subsists. But the grievance here was different: the manner in which his identity was used to build commercial interest in the film.
The judge listed the milestones the film draws on, including his selection as captain when betting allegations had surfaced in Indian cricket, and his shirt-waving celebration after the final.
Mr Ganguly, he said, is entitled to decide how his identity is presented commercially, through a narrative of his own.
He also noted the sequence. Mr Ganguly had told the first defendant of the biopic in 2018. The film came out after a hiatus of nearly seven years, right after the biopic’s release was announced.
That, he said, raised a prima facie impression of an intention to exploit his identity ahead of the biopic.
Why the film stays in cinemas
The court held that the plaintiffs had made out a prima facie case for an injunction. It then asked whether the defendants could be told to cut the objectionable portions, as the plaintiffs’ table suggested.
It concluded that the two strands are woven together, so that his persona is embedded in how the narratives are combined. Excision would mean dissecting and restructuring the film, and a judicial direction cannot do that.
Since the film had already been released in theatres, the balance of convenience favoured not restraining public viewing at this interim stage, subject to two conditions.
Order
The defendants must show a disclaimer in English and Hindi within two days of the judgment. It is to run for 5 seconds each at the start, immediately after the existing disclaimer, and 2 seconds each at the end, before the credits.
It must state that the film is not intended to infringe Mr Ganguly’s personality rights, and that the use of his name is not his acknowledgment of or consent to such use, which is sub judice in the suit.
Either of defendants 1 to 6 must furnish an unconditional bank guarantee of Rs 2 crore in favour of the Registrar General of the court within two weeks, as security pending the suit.
If either condition is not met in time, the defendants are jointly and severally restrained from exhibiting or exploiting the film in India or abroad in any medium, including OTT, and from circulating promotional material that commercially appropriates Mr Ganguly’s name, image, likeness, identity, persona, celebration, reputation or goodwill.
The judgment says its observations are confined to the interim application and are not an opinion on the merits of the suit. The application stands disposed of. It records no direction on the plaintiffs’ prayer for accounts.