Delhi High Court Passes Order Protecting Personality Rights Of Congress MP Shashi Tharoor

The Delhi High Court on Friday (May 8) passed an interim order protecting the personality rights of Congress MP Shashi Tharoor.Issuing notice on the application for interim injunction and summons in Tharoor's main suit seeking protection of his personality rights, Justice Mini Pushkarna while dictating the order said,"Orders will be passed in terms of prayers a, b , c and d". Appearing for Tharoor senior advocate Amit Sibal submitted that there are "three specific deepfake videos" for which the petitioner took recourse of IT Rules. He said that while certain content has been taken down but it keeps coming back. Arguing the threat to Tharoor's reputation by fake videos Sibal said, "A person who is public figure, statements are attributed to him which are politically sensitive. His own reputation is tarnished by fake videos. Even Fact Checkers in the media have said they are fake videos but yet public have the opinion that these are genuine. We approached the platforms".Referring to Rule 3(1)(d) of the IT Rules Sibal said that the petitioner wrote to secretary of MeiTY (Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology), also to DCP Delhi and pointed to the relevant documents on the same. He further referred to the alleged infringing links and said that some links have been taken down pursuant to the petitioner's letters.He said that while the authorities acknowledge that these are not permissible but the problem was that the infringing content has "reappeared on other urls". "They are always in different urls. These are three deepfake videos in different links. Identical, same video but appearing in different URL. What I say matters and it matters to India's standing as well," Sibal added. Sibal pointed that various media platforms had also fact checked the alleged infringing content and had found it to be fake.Referring to the interim injunction application Sibal argued that the first prayer sought relief against John Doe defendants, second prayer was a direction to social media platforms Meta and X to takedown all infringing content and deepfake videos. "Today the timeframe has been amended. It is 3 hours now," he said.Meanwhile counsel for Meta submitted that Urls identified in schedule 1 of the plaint are now inaccessible and all Instagram urls are inaccessible. However Sibal at this stage said that until last evening these URLs were accessible. Meta's counsel informed that the links were taken down today morning. The counsel further said that with regard to prayer for dynamic injunction the petitioner can indicate the alleged infringing links. "I will pass a standard order, liberty to them to approach. I am mindful of that," the court orally said. Meanwhile Counsel for Meta submitted that she will provide Basic Subscriber Information and Internet Protocol details of the URLs. Tharoor has named various individuals as defendants, including John Does (unknown individuals).He has said that he discovered a sophisticated, malicious campaign orchestrated by unknown infringers across various digital platforms. According to the suit, the infringers have weaponized artificial intelligence and machine learning to generate hyper-realistic audio-visual deepfakes by cloning Tharoor's face, voice, vocabulary, and mannerisms.He has alleged that the fabricated content was a deliberate attempt to tarnish his patriotic credentials, manipulate public perception, and unlawfully interfere with the democratic electoral process.It may be noted that the Court has been protecting the personality rights of Entrepreneur Aman Gupta, Telugu actor Allu Arjun, Malayalam actor Mohanlal, spiritual preacher Aniruddhacharya, singer Jubin Nautiyal, Deputy Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh Pawan Kalyan, former cricketer Sunil Gavaskar, and actors Kajol Devgan, R Madhavan and NTR Junior. Similar suit has been filed by actor Salman Khan.The coordinate benches have also passed orders protecting the personality rights of “The Art of Living” foundation founder Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, Telugu actor Nagarjuna, Bollywood actors Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, Abhishek Bachchan and film producer Karan Johar.Notably, the Court also protected the personality rights of journalist Sudhir Chaudhary, who had sought relief regarding the circulation of allegedly misleading and AI-generated videos against him on social media.The Court also passed a john doe order protecting the personality rights of podcaster Raj Shamani, observing that he is a known face in India, especially in the field of content creation.Case Title: Shashi Tharoor v. Ashok Kumar & OrsCS(OS) 414 of 2026Citation: 2026 LiveLaw (Del) 461

Delhi High Court Passes Order Protecting Personality Rights Of Congress MP Shashi Tharoor

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Delhi High Court Passes Order Protecting Personality Rights Of Congress MP Shashi Tharoor

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