Personality rights judgments in India protect a celebrity’s name, image, voice and persona from unauthorised and AI-driven misuse, even without a dedicated statute. Courts ground this protection in Article 21, Article 19(1)(a), the Trade Marks Act, 1999 and the Copyright Act, 1957.
In a 2026 ruling, the Delhi High Court, in Salman Khan v. Ashok Kumar/John Doe & Ors., restrained the makers of the film “Kala Hiran: The Battle for Legacy” from commercially exploiting the actor’s persona, including his name, mannerisms and distinctive attributes, and ordered the teaser and related posts taken down within 24 hours. Justice Jyoti Singh directed X, Meta and Google to remove the URLs within a further 24 hours if the uploaders did not comply. The order shows Indian courts now treat unauthorised persona exploitation, even inside a dramatised film, as an immediate injunction risk.
This article maps the landmark personality rights judgments in India in the order the doctrine developed, from its constitutional foundation to the AI and deepfake wave, and shows which statutory hook each court relied on.
Do personality rights exist in India without a dedicated statute?
Personality rights exist in India even though no single statute defines them, because courts protect a person’s identity through Article 21, Article 19(1)(a), the Trade Marks Act, 1999 and the common-law tort of passing off. There is no Personality Rights Act on the books. The protection is judge-made, assembled case by case from constitutional privacy, trademark law and the law of unfair competition.
Three terms get used loosely, so it helps to separate them. Personality rights are the umbrella: the bundle of interests a person has in their own identity. Publicity rights are the commercial slice of that bundle, the right to control and profit from your name, face and voice.
The right to privacy is the dignitary slice, the right not to have your identity exposed or exploited against your will. A celebrity injunction usually runs on the publicity right; a deepfake case often runs on both.
Which attributes do courts actually protect? Name, image, likeness, voice, signature, a signature gesture and a catchphrase have all been held protectable when they identify a specific person. The test the courts keep returning to is identifiability: if the public would recognise the individual from the attribute used, the attribute is protected. A generic feature that points to no one in particular is not.
For the full definitional treatment, including the difference between personality rights and copyright or trademark and how each source of protection works, iPleaders’ explainer on personality rights in India sets out the framework. This article stays with the judgments. The point to carry forward is that the absence of a statute has not stopped Indian courts from building a working body of law, and the cases below are that law.
Why are celebrities going to court to protect their personality rights?
Celebrities are going to court because generative AI has made it cheap and fast to clone a face, a voice and a name for fake endorsements, deepfake pornography and scams, turning a monetised identity into something anyone can misappropriate at scale. The economics changed, and the litigation followed. A tool that once needed a studio now needs a phone.
Start with identity as a commercial asset. A well-known name, face and voice carry endorsement and licensing value, so using them without a licence is free-riding that both diverts income and dilutes genuine deals. When a jeweller kept running an advertisement featuring a famous film-star couple after the endorsement contract had lapsed, the Delhi High Court treated the continued use as infringement of their publicity right. The value sits in the association, and the law protects the person’s control over it.
Then came the AI and deepfake driver, which is what turned a trickle of cases into a wave. Generative image tools and voice-cloning models made misappropriation cheap, scalable and hard to detect, so misuse climbed sharply from 2023 and the number of injunctions rose with it. Morphed faces on fake ads, cloned singing voices selling apps, and synthetic clips of actors endorsing products they never touched became a near-monthly feature of the cause lists. Early signals suggest the curve keeps rising as the tools get better, which is why practitioners now expect persona clauses in every celebrity contract.
There is a dignitary harm too, separate from the money. Deepfakes attach a person to things they never did or endorsed: pornographic deepfakes targeting a leading actor, false medical endorsements put in the mouth of a well-known surgeon, and fabricated spiritual endorsements of health remedies. That is an Article 21 dignity injury, not only a lost licensing fee, and courts have treated it as the more serious of the two.
And the harm does not stop at the celebrity. Fake AI endorsements defraud the fan or the patient who trusts the face, so a false medical clip can send a sick person to a useless product, and a cloned-voice investment ad can empty a pensioner’s account. Courts have read that public-deception element into the urgency of the injunction: the faster the fake spreads, the more people it misleads. This is the second-order cost that a purely commercial framing misses.
So why the courtroom, and why now? A John Doe order against unnamed defendants, coupled with directions binding X, Meta and Google to take content down and MeitY or the Department of Telecommunications to block URLs, is the fastest and broadest remedy against anonymous, multiplying infringers. It beats chasing each uploader one by one or waiting on a platform’s own complaint queue. That is why the courtroom, not the complaint form, has been the default route since the first blanket celebrity order in 2022, a shift explored in detail across the cases below.
What courts protect as ‘persona’: the attributes checklist
The identity elements Indian judgments have held protectable
✓
Name / stage name
e.g. Rajinikanth; Jackie Shroff (‘Jaggu Dada’)
✓
Face, image, likeness
e.g. Titan; Aishwarya Rai
✓
Voice (including AI-cloned)
e.g. Arijit Singh; Asha Bhosle
✓
Signature / distinctive style
e.g. Rajinikanth
✓
Signature gesture
e.g. Anil Kapoor
✓
Catchphrase
e.g. ‘Jhakaas’ (Anil Kapoor); ‘Bhidu’ (Jackie Shroff)
The common test: identifiability, not stardom. If the public recognises the individual from the attribute, the attribute is protected.
Which are the landmark personality rights judgments in India?
The landmark personality rights judgments in India run from the 1994 Auto Shankar privacy ruling, through the 2012 Titan Industries endorsement case and the 2022 Amitabh Bachchan John Doe order, to the 2023 to 2026 AI and deepfake injunctions, and the table below sets them out at a glance. Read it as a chronology: each row adds one building block to the doctrine, and the holdings column tells you what that block was.
| Case | Court, year | Persona or attribute | What the court held |
|---|---|---|---|
| R. Rajagopal (Auto Shankar) | Supreme Court, 1994 | Life story, privacy | Read privacy into Article 21; a person controls their own life story |
| ICC Development | Delhi High Court, 2003 | Right of publicity | Publicity right vests in the individual, not an event or corporation |
| D.M. Entertainment (Daler Mehndi) | Delhi High Court, 2010 | A singer’s persona | Unauthorised commercial use of a persona is actionable; publicity plus passing off |
| Titan Industries | Delhi High Court, 2012 | Image after a lapsed endorsement | Post-contract use of a celebrity image infringes; identifiability test |
| Rajinikanth | Madras High Court, 2015 | Name, image, style | Protected without registration; extends beyond Delhi |
| Gautam Gambhir | Delhi High Court, 2017 | A shared personal name | Boundary case on when using a name does and does not infringe |
| Amitabh Bachchan | Delhi High Court, 2022 | Name, image, voice, persona | First blanket John Doe order for personality rights |
| Digital Collectibles | Delhi High Court, 2023 | Public-domain player data | Publicity right subservient to Article 19(1)(a); no infringement |
| Anil Kapoor | Delhi High Court, 2023 | Name, voice, “Jhakaas”, gestures | AI morphing, deepfakes and GIFs restrained |
| Jackie Shroff | Delhi High Court, 2024 | Name, “Bhidu”, voice, image | First to address AI chatbots |
| Arijit Singh | Bombay High Court, 2024 | Voice, name, likeness | India’s first AI voice-cloning injunction |
| Dr Devi Prasad Shetty | Delhi High Court, 2024 | A surgeon’s face and name | Protection for a non-entertainer professional |
| Aishwarya Rai Bachchan | Delhi High Court, 2025 | Name, image, likeness, voice | Ex parte injunction against generative-AI deepfakes |
| Nagarjuna Akkineni | Delhi High Court, 2025 | Name, image | Restrained pornographic deepfakes, merchandise and AI shorts |
| Ravi Kishan | Delhi High Court, 2026 | Voice, image | AI deepfakes and cloned-voice ads restrained |
| Jubin Nautiyal | Delhi High Court, 2026 | Synthesised voice, avatars | Ex parte injunction against AI platforms |
| Salman Khan (Kala Hiran) | Delhi High Court, 2026 | Name, mannerisms, attributes | Persona exploitation restrained; 24-hour teaser takedown |
The table is the marquee set, not every order. Posthumous rights (Krishna Kishore Singh) and several 2024 to 2026 injunctions (Asha Bhosle, Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, Karan Johar, Abhishek Bachchan) are discussed in the body but kept out of the table so it stays scannable. If you are revising for an exam or a moot, this is the spine to memorise first, and the sections below fill in the reasoning.
So which judgment should you cite first? Rajagopal for the constitutional root, then whichever case on the list matches the facts in front of you.
The doctrine developed in five phases
The doctrine grew in five recognisable phases, and seeing the phases makes the case list far easier to hold in your head. First, the constitutional root: privacy read into Article 21 in the mid-1990s and elevated to a fundamental right in 2017. Second, the naming of a distinct right of publicity in the early 2000s, and its use to stop commercial misappropriation through passing off. Third, the John Doe era from 2022, when courts began issuing single blanket orders against the world at large.
Fourth, the AI and deepfake wave from 2023, when morphing and voice cloning pulled a new class of defendant into the frame. Fifth, and running alongside the fourth, the free-speech limit, which marks the boundary the injunctions cannot cross. Each phase answers a different question, and the rest of this article takes them in turn.
How did Indian courts first recognise the right of publicity?
Indian courts first recognised the right of publicity by reading privacy into Article 21 in the mid-1990s and then locating a distinct commercial identity right in the early 2000s. The right of publicity did not arrive fully formed. It was assembled from a privacy judgment, a sports-marketing dispute and a run of passing-off cases, each adding a piece.
The constitutional seed lies in Rajagopal and Puttaswamy
The constitutional seed lies in R. Rajagopal v. State of Tamil Nadu, (1994) 6 SCC 632, the “Auto Shankar” case, where the Supreme Court read the right to privacy into Article 21 and held that a person controls the publication of matters concerning their own life story. A prisoner’s autobiography was at the centre of it, and the Court held that a citizen has a right to safeguard the privacy of his own, his family’s and other private matters, subject to the well-known exception for public records and legitimate public interest. That holding gave later publicity cases their constitutional footing.
The footing was reinforced two decades later. In K.S. Puttaswamy v. Union of India, (2017) 10 SCC 1, a nine-judge bench of the Supreme Court held that the right to privacy is a fundamental right protected under Article 21 and Part III of the Constitution. Privacy, the Court held, includes the right to control the commercial use of one’s identity, which is about as clear an endorsement of publicity rights as an Indian court has given. After Puttaswamy, a celebrity asserting control over their persona is asserting a facet of a fundamental right, not merely a commercial interest.
Who owns the right of publicity, the star or the sponsor?
The right of publicity vests in the individual, not in the sponsor, the event or the corporation that features them. The Delhi High Court settled that early in ICC Development (International) Ltd. v. Arvee Enterprises, 2003 (26) PTC 245 (Del), holding that the right of publicity attaches to an individual or to some indicia of their personality, and cannot be claimed by an event organiser or a corporation. A cricket tournament’s organiser could not appropriate the publicity value of the players. The right follows the person.
From there, courts used passing off to stop commercial misappropriation of a persona. In D.M. Entertainment Pvt. Ltd. v. Baby Gift House, 2010 SCC OnLine Del 4790, the Delhi High Court recognised that unauthorised commercial exploitation of a well-known singer’s persona, through look-alike dolls, was actionable both as an infringement of the right of publicity and as passing off. The persona was being sold; the law treated that as a wrong even without a registered trademark.
Then came the anchor case for commercial identity. In Titan Industries Ltd. v. M/s Ramkumar Jewellers, 2012 (50) PTC 486 (Del), the Delhi High Court held that using a celebrity’s image after the endorsement contract had lapsed infringes their right of publicity, and it framed the two-part test the later cases lean on: is the person identifiable from the use, and has the defendant misappropriated the plaintiff’s identity for commercial gain? What experienced practitioners take from Titan is that a lapsed contract is not a licence. The moment the term ends, the continued use becomes actionable, and brands that keep an old campaign running “just for a while” are walking straight into an injunction.
How far does protection of a celebrity’s name stretch?
Protection of a celebrity’s name stretches to their image and personal style, and it does not depend on a trademark registration or on the case being heard in Delhi. In Shivaji Rao Gaikwad v. Varsha Productions (Madras High Court, 3 February 2015), the Madras High Court restrained the unauthorised use of a leading actor’s name, image and style in a film title, holding that a celebrity’s personality rights are protectable even without a registered mark. That mattered for two reasons: it confirmed the right exists independently of the Trade Marks Act, and it showed the doctrine was not a Delhi-only phenomenon.
The boundary is identifiability, and one case is useful precisely because it tested the edge. In Gautam Gambhir v. D.A.P & Co. (Delhi High Court, 13 December 2017), a dispute over a restaurant using a name that happened to match a well-known cricketer’s, the Delhi High Court declined to find infringement where the defendant was using their own personal name in good faith and there was no attempt to trade on the celebrity’s identity. So the same name, used without any attempt to suggest an association, does not automatically infringe.
A common question from students is whether a celebrity needs to register anything before they can sue. The short answer is no. The publicity right arises from identifiability and reputation, not from a filing, though a registered trademark over a name or catchphrase (more on this in the enforcement section) makes the case cleaner and the remedies wider. Registration strengthens the hand; it is not the source of the right.
Personality rights in India: the doctrinal arc, 1994 to 2026
How the landmark judgments built the right, phase by phase
1994
R. Rajagopal v. State of Tamil Nadu
Privacy read into Article 21; control over one’s life story
2003
ICC Development v. Arvee Enterprises
Right of publicity vests in the individual
2010-2012
D.M. Entertainment; Titan Industries
Commercial persona protected via passing off
2015-2017
Rajinikanth; Gautam Gambhir; Puttaswamy
Name protection consolidated; privacy a fundamental right
2022
Amitabh Bachchan v. Rajat Nagi
First blanket John Doe order
2023
Anil Kapoor; Digital Collectibles v. Galactus
AI morphing pulled in; free-speech limit drawn
2024-2026
Arijit Singh to Salman Khan
The deepfake and voice-cloning wave
What did Amitabh Bachchan v. Rajat Nagi settle about John Doe orders?
Amitabh Bachchan v. Rajat Nagi, CS(COMM) 819/2022, an order of the Delhi High Court dated 25 November 2022, settled that a court can grant a single blanket John Doe order protecting a celebrity’s name, image, voice and personality attributes against the world at large. The suit arose from misuse of the actor’s name, image and voice in fake lottery and KBC-style scams, along with unauthorised merchandise. The Court granted an omnibus injunction restraining not just the named defendants but unknown persons, and directed the takedown of the offending content.
A John Doe order, called an Ashok Kumar order in Indian practice, is an injunction against unidentified defendants, described in the cause title as John Doe or Ashok Kumar because their real names are not yet known. It exists precisely for the situation a celebrity faces online: dozens or hundreds of anonymous accounts, sellers and sites, appearing faster than any plaintiff can name them. The order binds whoever falls within the described class, so the plaintiff can enforce it against new infringers as they surface without going back to court each time.
How does that differ from an ordinary ex parte injunction? An ex parte order is simply one passed without hearing the other side, usually because the urgency does not allow it; it can be against a named defendant or a John Doe. A John Doe order is defined by who it binds (unknown persons), not by whether the other side was heard. In practice the two overlap, because most celebrity John Doe orders are also granted ex parte at the first hearing, but they answer different questions, and an exam answer should keep them apart.
Why did 2022 become the turn? Because the blanket-order template it confirmed is what every later celebrity suit has followed. The practical reality is that before a single in-rem order was available, a celebrity had to play whack-a-mole with individual defendants.
After it, one order could cover the whole field, and the AI wave that arrived a year later plugged straight into that template. For readers who want the 2022 order dissected clause by clause, our detailed note on the Amitabh Bachchan personality rights case does exactly that.
Two edge cases recur. A fan account using a star’s name can be restrained if it uses the name and image commercially or in a way that suggests the star’s endorsement, though pure, clearly-labelled fan expression sits closer to the free-speech side discussed later. And a lapsed endorsement, as the 2012 Titan ruling held, gives a brand no residual right to keep using the image; the John Doe template now lets a celebrity shut that down quickly alongside the anonymous infringers.
Which personality rights judgments in India deal with AI deepfakes and voice cloning?
The personality rights judgments in India that deal with AI cover morphing and deepfakes from 2023, voice cloning from 2024, and a near-monthly run of 2025 and 2026 injunctions ending, so far, in the 2026 Salman Khan order. This is the centre of gravity of the current law. If the foundational cases built the right, the AI cases are where it is being stress-tested, and they are the ones the exam-setters and the news cycle both care about.
Anil Kapoor brought AI morphing within personality rights
Anil Kapoor v. Simply Life India, CS(COMM) 652/2023 is the landmark that pulled AI misuse squarely within personality rights. In an order dated 20 September 2023, the Delhi High Court restrained a large group of defendants from using the actor’s name, voice, image, the catchphrase “Jhakaas” and his distinctive gestures, and it did so expressly against AI morphing, deepfakes, face-swap GIFs and ringtone misuse. The Court held that free speech allows comment and criticism of a public figure, but it does not extend to using their persona for commercial gain or to jeopardise their dignity through morphing and deepfakes.
What made the order significant was its reach into the technology. It named the specific misuses (deepfake videos, AI-generated images, GIFs, sale of merchandise) rather than granting a vague restraint, which gave the plaintiff something enforceable against platforms. Frankly, this is the case that gets over-cited, but for good reason: it is the first Indian order to treat AI-generated persona misuse as a distinct and injunctable wrong, and every 2024-onwards suit borrows its vocabulary.
Can a court stop someone cloning a singer’s voice?
A court can stop someone cloning a singer’s voice, and an Indian court has done exactly that. In Arijit Singh v. Codible Ventures LLP, 2024 SCC OnLine Bom 2445, an order of 26 July 2024, the Bombay High Court granted India’s first AI voice-cloning personality-rights injunction, restraining platforms that let users generate songs in a well-known playback singer’s voice without consent. The Court held that making AI tools available to convert any voice into a celebrity’s, for profit, violates the singer’s personality and publicity rights, and that the voice is a protectable attribute. This is the non-Delhi anchor of the whole line, and it shows the doctrine is not confined to one High Court.
The chatbot problem got its own treatment slightly earlier. In Jaikishan Kakubhai Saraf (Jackie Shroff) v. The Peppy Store, 2024:DHC:4046, an order of 15 May 2024, the Delhi High Court restrained e-commerce sellers, AI chatbots and social accounts from misusing a veteran actor’s name, the nicknames “Jaggu Dada” and “Bhidu”, his voice and image. It is generally treated as the first Indian order to squarely address AI chatbots that mimic a real person. And the voice-protection line continued into the veteran-playback space: in Asha Bhosle v. Mayk Inc. (Bombay High Court, 2025), the Bombay High Court protected a legendary singer’s voice and image against AI cloning, confirming that the interest does not fade with age or with a long career already behind the artist.
The AI cases also crystallise what “personality” legally covers. Between them, these orders have protected a name, an image, a voice, a signature style, a hand gesture and a catchphrase, which is a useful checklist for anyone drafting a plaint. The through-line running back to the deepfake-in-marketing problem is the same one covered in iPleaders’ piece on how deepfakes are being used in marketing: the technology is neutral, but the commercial exploitation of a real identity is not. For a wider view of who owns and controls creative identity and content once it moves onto streaming platforms, this LawSikho piece on intellectual property and ownership on OTT platforms is a useful companion in the media and entertainment context.
The doctrine now reaches doctors and spiritual leaders, not only film stars
The doctrine now reaches any recognisable professional, not only film stars, and two 2024 and 2025 orders prove it. In Dr Devi Prasad Shetty v. Medicine Me, CS(COMM) 1053/2024, the Delhi High Court protected a well-known cardiac surgeon against deepfakes that used his face and name to sell health products, extending personality-rights protection to a non-entertainer whose reputation is professional rather than cinematic. The Court also protected the associated hospital marks, treating the medical misinformation as an aggravating factor because patients could act on it.
The reach widened again with spiritual figures. In Sri Sri Ravi Shankar v. John Doe (Delhi High Court, 2025), the Delhi High Court restrained deepfakes that falsely showed a spiritual leader endorsing health remedies, across AI, metaverse and future-technology formats. Early signals suggest this is where the doctrine is heading next: away from Bollywood exclusivity and towards any face the public trusts, because a trusted face is exactly what a scammer wants to borrow. That trend is worth watching for anyone advising doctors, educators or public figures who assume this is a film-industry problem.
What did the 2025 and 2026 injunction wave cover?
The 2025 and 2026 injunction wave covered a widening cast of actors, singers, a filmmaker and a South-Indian star, almost month by month. Taken together, these are the recent judgments most likely to come up in a 2026 exam or a current-affairs round, so here is the run in order:
- Aishwarya Rai Bachchan v. Aishwaryaworld.com (Delhi High Court, 2025): an ex parte injunction protecting a leading actor’s name, image, likeness and voice against generative-AI deepfakes and face-morphing, the flagship generative-AI ruling of the year.
- Abhishek Bachchan v. The Bollywood Tee Shop (Delhi High Court, 2025): merchandise and AI-generated videos restrained, completing the protection of the Bachchan family across three separate suits.
- Nagarjuna Akkineni v. Various Online Platforms (Delhi High Court, 2025): protection against pornographic deepfake sites, unauthorised merchandise and AI shorts, extending the wave to South-Indian cinema.
- Sri Sri Ravi Shankar (Delhi High Court, 2025): false health-endorsement deepfakes of a spiritual leader restrained.
- Karan Johar v. Ashok Kumar/John Doe (Delhi High Court, 2025 to 2026): a filmmaker’s name, the nickname “KJo”, image and voice protected against deepfakes, GIFs and AI content, showing the right is not limited to on-screen performers.
- Ravi Kishan v. John Doe (Delhi High Court, 2026): AI deepfakes and cloned-voice advertisements restrained, decided by the same bench that later heard the Salman Khan matter.
- Jubin Nautiyal v. John Doe (Delhi High Court, 2026): an ex parte injunction against AI platforms and sellers over a synthesised singing voice and AI avatars.
- The 2026 Salman Khan order, the latest in the line, restraining persona exploitation inside a dramatised film and ordering a 24-hour teaser takedown.
The pattern across all eight is consistent: an ex parte or John Doe order, a specific list of prohibited AI uses, and directions to intermediaries to take content down. But the volume is the real story. A doctrine that produced a handful of orders in a decade now produces one most months, which tells you how routine the courts have made this remedy.
Do Delhi and Bombay High Courts approach these cases differently?
Delhi and Bombay High Courts reach the same result by slightly different routes, but the destination is the same: both grant John Doe and ex parte relief against AI persona misuse. The Delhi High Court carries the sheer volume, from the 2022 Amitabh Bachchan order through the 2026 wave, and it has developed the most detailed vocabulary for describing prohibited AI uses. The Bombay High Court supplied the breadth, taking the voice-cloning frontier in the 2024 Arijit Singh order and the veteran-voice question in the Asha Bhosle matter.
Is there a doctrinal split? Not really. Both courts anchor the right in privacy and passing off, both accept that voice and likeness are protectable, and both bind intermediaries.
The practical reality is that a plaintiff files where the defendant, the platform or the harm is located, and can expect a broadly similar order either way. The convergence, rather than any conflict, is what makes this a national doctrine rather than a local one.
When have Indian courts refused a personality rights claim?
Indian courts refuse a personality rights claim when the use is protected speech rather than commercial misappropriation. The clearest statement of the limit is Digital Collectibles Pte Ltd. v. Galactus Funware Technology Pvt. Ltd., CS(COMM) 108/2023, an order of the Delhi High Court dated 26 April 2023, where the Court held that the right of publicity is not absolute and is subservient to the right to freedom of speech and expression under Article 19(1)(a). Using a celebrity’s publicly available information, in that case cricketers’ names and match statistics on digital player cards, was held not to infringe, because that information sits in the public domain and its use was protected commercial speech.
The reasoning matters as much as the result. The Court accepted that a right of publicity exists, then held that it cannot be stretched to fence off facts, news and information that anyone is free to use. A celebrity cannot monopolise their own publicly available data, and an over-broad publicity claim that tried to would run into the free-speech guarantee.
This is the single most important counter-weight case, and a digest that leaves it out gives a false picture of the law as uniformly pro-celebrity. So where exactly is the line? It runs between using an identity to sell something and using public information to inform or comment.
Free speech, parody, news and public-domain use stay outside the injunction
Free speech, parody, satire, news reporting and public-domain use generally stay outside the reach of a personality-rights injunction, and this is where the enforcement wave meets its friction. A meme or a GIF of a public figure, made as comment or humour and not to sell a product or suggest an endorsement, is expression, and the Anil Kapoor order itself acknowledged that legitimate comment, criticism, parody and satire are protected. Posting a celebrity’s photo on social media, without commercialising it or implying an association, is not by itself a violation.
News reporting is protected on the same footing, tracing back to the 1994 privacy holding that carved out public records and legitimate public interest. A biopic or a film “based on” a real person occupies a greyer zone: it can be protected creative and biographical expression, but it crosses the line when it appropriates a living person’s identity for commercial exploitation without consent, which is roughly where the Salman Khan film order landed. The distinction is commercial use versus expressive use, and it is rarely clean.
Here is the second-order worry that a balanced reading has to flag. The pro-celebrity injunction wave sits in tension with the free-speech limit, and an over-broad John Doe order, drafted to catch anonymous scammers, can sweep in legitimate parody, fan art, satire and news if it is not carefully worded. The mistake we see most often is a prayer that asks the court to restrain “all” uses of a persona, which no court should grant and which, if granted loosely, chills expression the Constitution protects. The better drafting names the commercial and deceptive uses and leaves genuine expression alone.
Do personality rights survive a celebrity’s death?
Whether personality rights survive death is genuinely unsettled in India, and the leading case declined to grant relief. In Krishna Kishore Singh v. Sarla A. Saraogi, CS(COMM) 187/2021, brought by the late actor Sushant Singh Rajput’s father, the Delhi High Court in orders of 2021 and 11 July 2023 refused to restrain films said to be based on the deceased actor’s life. The Court engaged the maxim actio personalis moritur cum persona, a personal action dies with the person, and treated the survivability of publicity rights as an open and difficult question rather than a settled entitlement.
The core problem is whether a publicity right is the kind of right that can be inherited or transferred at all. A trademark or a copyright is property and passes to heirs; a privacy right is personal and, on the traditional view, extinguishes at death. Publicity rights sit awkwardly between the two, and Indian courts have not definitively placed them. The nearest statutory handle is Section 306 of the Indian Succession Act, 1925, which addresses which causes of action survive the death of a person, and which points against the survival of purely personal actions.
A common question is whether heirs can stop deepfakes of a dead celebrity. On the current law, the honest answer is that it is uncertain: they may have a stronger case where a registered trademark or a clear commercial interest survives, and a weaker one where the claim is purely to the deceased’s dignity or privacy. Commentators increasingly argue for statutory clarity on a fixed post-mortem term, as several other jurisdictions have adopted, and the pressure for a dedicated statute (discussed next) is loudest precisely on this question.
Which statutes and articles drive personality rights judgments in India?
Personality rights judgments in India draw on four anchors, backed by a fifth for enforcement. The four are Article 21 for privacy and dignity, Article 19(1)(a) for the free-speech limit, the Trade Marks Act, 1999 for passing off and the protection of names, and the Copyright Act, 1957 for performers’ and moral rights. The fifth is the IT Rules, 2021, which supplies the takedown machinery. No single provision does the work; the courts braid these strands together.
Article 21 is the constitutional root. It supplied the privacy holding in the 1994 Auto Shankar case, the fundamental-right status confirmed in the 2017 privacy judgment, and the dignity reasoning in most of the deepfake orders, where morphing a person into pornography or a false endorsement is treated as an assault on dignity. When you read a modern injunction citing “dignity”, it is drawing on Article 21.
Article 19(1)(a) is the counter-anchor, the limit rather than the source. It is what the 2023 Digital Collectibles ruling used to hold the publicity right subservient to free speech, and it is the provision a defendant reaches for when the use is parody, news or public-domain information. Trademark law does the commercial heavy lifting: passing off under the Trade Marks Act, 1999, read with Section 9 of the Trade Marks Act, 1999 on distinctiveness, underpins Titan, Rajinikanth, the Daler Mehndi case and the trademark elements of Anil Kapoor, because a recognisable name or catchphrase can function as a source identifier.
Copyright law covers the performance and the voice. Section 57 of the Copyright Act, 1957 protects an author’s moral rights, and the performers’ rights provisions, including Section 38B, protect a performer’s moral rights over their performance, which is why the voice-cloning cases (Arijit Singh, Asha Bhosle) sit partly on copyright as well as on publicity. Bringing these together in one place is the differentiator this digest offers: most treatments name the cases or name the statutes, but few show which hook each court actually pulled.
Do platforms have to take down deepfakes under the IT Rules?
Platforms do have takedown and due-diligence duties, and the courts lean on the IT Rules, 2021 to enforce them. The Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021 require intermediaries to observe due diligence, to remove or disable access to unlawful content on receipt of a court order or a valid notification, and, under later amendments, to address synthetic and AI-generated content. That is why celebrity orders routinely bind X, Meta and Google directly and direct the Department of Telecommunications and MeitY to block offending URLs.
An intermediary that follows the due-diligence obligations and acts on a valid order keeps its safe-harbour protection; one that ignores a court order or fails its due diligence risks losing it. The practical effect is that the injunction and the Rules work as a pair: the court declares the use unlawful, and the Rules give the plaintiff a mechanism to make platforms act on that declaration at scale. For the detail of how the current framework handles intermediary duties and AI labelling, iPleaders’ explainer on the IT Rules framework behind platform takedowns sets out the obligations in full.
Are the AI companies themselves liable for user-made deepfakes? That question is still being worked out, but the recent orders point towards responsibility where a platform’s own tool is built to generate a specific celebrity’s voice or face on demand, as in the voice-cloning suits, rather than merely hosting user uploads. Providing the cloning engine, courts have suggested, is closer to authorship of the wrong than passive hosting is.
Which statutory hook drives each personality rights judgment
The scaffold no competitor maps: article or Act, and the cases that leaned on it
| Statutory hook | Judgments that leaned on it |
|---|---|
| Article 21 (privacy, dignity) | Rajagopal, Puttaswamy, Aishwarya Rai, most deepfake orders |
| Article 19(1)(a) (free-speech limit) | Digital Collectibles v. Galactus |
| Trade Marks Act, 1999 (ss. 2, 9; passing off) | Titan, Rajinikanth, D.M. Entertainment, Anil Kapoor |
| Copyright Act, 1957 (ss. 38B, 57; performers’ / moral rights) | Arijit Singh, Asha Bhosle |
| IT Rules, 2021 (intermediary takedown / AI labelling) | Anil Kapoor, Aishwarya Rai, Salman Khan (platform directions) |
| Section 306, Indian Succession Act, 1925 | Krishna Kishore Singh (posthumous) |
How can a person enforce their personality rights in India?
A person enforces personality rights in India by registering distinctive identity elements as trademarks, then suing for passing off and seeking a John Doe or ex parte injunction with directions to intermediaries to take the content down. The remedy is civil and fast, and the sequence is what makes it work. Get the paperwork in order first, then move quickly when the misuse appears.
Registration comes first because it widens the toolkit. Registering a name, a stage name or a catchphrase as a trademark under the Trade Marks Act, 1999, across the relevant classes, gives statutory infringement remedies on top of the common-law passing-off action, and it makes the identifiability point almost self-proving. Not every attribute can be registered, but the ones that function as source identifiers usually can, which is why celebrities increasingly file for their catchphrases and signatures.
Then comes the suit. A John Doe suit is filed in the appropriate High Court, usually on the commercial side, with an application for an urgent ex parte injunction; the plaint sets out the persona attributes claimed, the misuse, and the class of unknown defendants. On evidence, a plaintiff needs to show reputation and identifiability (that the public associates the attribute with them) and the misuse itself: screenshots, URLs, the deepfake files, listings of infringing merchandise, and proof of the commercial or deceptive purpose. To get a deepfake taken down through the courts, the plaintiff obtains the order and then serves it on the platforms and, where needed, seeks directions to MeitY or the Department of Telecommunications to block URLs.
There is a preventive layer too, and it is the second-order shift worth flagging. Endorsement, influencer and film agreements now increasingly carry explicit clauses on AI, voice cloning and persona use, allocating who may create synthetic content, in what medium, and for how long, precisely because the litigation has made the risk concrete. Anyone drafting in this space should read our guide to the persona and image clauses in an influencer agreement, because a well-drafted clause prevents the dispute the injunction only cures.
Can non-celebrities and heirs bring the same claim?
Non-celebrities can bring a personality-rights or privacy claim, though the shape of the claim shifts with fame. An ordinary person whose face or voice is deepfaked has a strong privacy and dignity claim under Article 21 and, increasingly, a defamation or IT-Rules remedy, even if the commercial publicity element is thinner because there is no established endorsement value to misappropriate. The Devi Shetty order is the bridge: it protected a professional who is recognisable but not a film star, and the logic runs on towards any identifiable individual.
Sportspersons are covered on the same footing as film stars; the cricketers in the 2003 and 2023 cases were treated as holders of publicity rights like any celebrity, subject to the same public-domain limit on their match data. Heirs, as the posthumous section explained, sit on less certain ground, because the survivability of publicity rights after death is unresolved. Early signals suggest non-celebrity and post-mortem claims are the next frontier, and they are the two areas where a dedicated statute would change the answer most. Until then, the practical advice for a non-celebrity is to plead privacy, dignity and, where money is involved, passing off, and not to rely on the publicity right alone.
Frequently asked questions on personality rights judgments in India
What are personality rights in India?
Personality rights in India are the bundle of interests a person has in their own identity, including the right to control the commercial use of their name, image, voice, signature and other identifying attributes. They are not defined by any single statute. Courts protect them through Article 21, trademark law and the tort of passing off, treating unauthorised commercial or dignitary misuse of a recognisable identity as actionable.
What is the difference between personality rights and publicity rights?
Personality rights are the wider category, covering both the commercial and the dignitary interest in one’s identity. Publicity rights are the commercial slice: the right to control and profit from your name, face and voice. In practice Indian judgments use the terms interchangeably, but the distinction matters when a claim is purely dignitary, such as a deepfake that damages reputation without any commercial exploitation.
Which cases are the leading personality rights judgments to know?
The leading judgments to know are the 1994 Auto Shankar privacy ruling, the 2012 Titan Industries endorsement case, the 2022 Amitabh Bachchan John Doe order, the 2023 Anil Kapoor AI-morphing order, the 2024 Arijit Singh voice-cloning injunction, and the 2023 Digital Collectibles free-speech limit. Together they trace the doctrine from constitutional privacy, through publicity rights and the John Doe turn, to the AI era and its boundary. The master table earlier in this article lists them in full with the holding in each.
Which was the first personality rights case in India?
The constitutional starting point is the 1994 Auto Shankar case, R. Rajagopal v. State of Tamil Nadu, which read the right to privacy into Article 21 and recognised a person’s control over their own life story. The first clear articulation of a commercial right of publicity came in 2003 in ICC Development v. Arvee Enterprises, which held that the right vests in the individual, not in an event or corporation.
Is there a law for personality rights in India?
There is no dedicated personality rights statute in India. Protection is judge-made, assembled from Article 21 (privacy and dignity), Article 19(1)(a) (the free-speech limit), the Trade Marks Act, 1999 (passing off) and the Copyright Act, 1957 (performers’ and moral rights), with the IT Rules, 2021 supplying the takedown machinery. The absence of a single statute is now the main argument for legislative reform.
Which article of the Constitution protects personality rights?
Article 21, the right to life and personal liberty, is the primary source, because it houses the right to privacy and dignity that the courts read personality protection into. Article 19(1)(a), the right to freedom of speech and expression, works in the other direction as a limit, protecting parody, news and public-domain use of a public figure’s identity.
Are personality rights legally recognised without a statute?
Yes. Indian courts have consistently recognised and enforced personality and publicity rights without a dedicated statute, granting injunctions and takedown directions on the basis of constitutional privacy, passing off and, more recently, the IT Rules. A run of judgments from 1994 to 2026 forms a coherent body of law, so the lack of legislation has not left celebrities without a remedy.
What remedies do courts grant in personality rights suits?
Courts most commonly grant injunctions: interim, ex parte and John Doe orders restraining the misuse of a person’s persona. Alongside the injunction, they order the takedown of infringing content, direct intermediaries such as X, Meta and Google to remove URLs, and can direct MeitY or the Department of Telecommunications to block access. Damages and delivery-up of infringing material are also available, though injunctive relief is the practical prize.
Can a celebrity claim damages for personality rights infringement?
Yes, damages can be claimed for unauthorised commercial use of a persona, calculated on the licensing value diverted or the profits made by the infringer. In practice, most celebrity suits prioritise a fast injunction and takedown over a damages trial, because the harm from a spreading deepfake is reputational and immediate. Damages become central mainly where a lapsed-endorsement or merchandising defendant is identifiable and solvent.
How do Indian courts protect celebrities from AI deepfakes?
Indian courts protect celebrities from AI deepfakes by granting injunctions that specifically name the prohibited AI uses (morphing, deepfake video, voice cloning, AI-generated images and GIFs) and by binding intermediaries to take the content down. The 2023 Anil Kapoor order and the 2024 Arijit Singh voice-cloning order set the template, and the 2025 to 2026 wave applied it almost monthly. The IT Rules, 2021 give the orders their enforcement teeth against platforms.
Can I be sued for a parody or satire of a public figure?
Genuine parody and satire of a public figure are generally protected as free expression under Article 19(1)(a), and the courts have said personality rights do not extend to legitimate comment, criticism, parody or satire. The risk arises when the parody is a cover for commercial exploitation, or when it uses the persona to sell a product or imply an endorsement. The line is commercial or deceptive use versus genuine expression.
How do personality rights in India compare with the US right of publicity?
The US right of publicity is largely a matter of state statute and common law, is well developed, and in several states is expressly inheritable for a fixed post-mortem term. India has no equivalent statute, builds the right from constitutional privacy and passing off, and leaves post-mortem survival unresolved. The Indian doctrine is younger and judge-made, but the recent AI cases have made it move quickly.
Are sportspersons covered the same way as film stars?
Yes, sportspersons hold personality and publicity rights on the same basis as film stars, as the cricket-related cases from 2003 onwards confirm. The one qualification is the public-domain limit set in 2023: a sportsperson cannot monopolise publicly available facts such as their own match statistics, which remain free for others to use as information and commercial speech.
Can ordinary people (non-celebrities) claim personality rights?
Non-celebrities can claim protection, though usually through privacy and dignity under Article 21 rather than the commercial publicity right, since they lack established endorsement value. A deepfake of an ordinary person still engages privacy, defamation and IT-Rules remedies. The extension of protection to a recognisable professional in the 2024 Devi Shetty order signals that identifiability, not stardom, is the real threshold.
Do personality rights survive after death?
This is unsettled in India. The Delhi High Court, in the Krishna Kishore Singh litigation concerning the late Sushant Singh Rajput, declined to grant relief and treated the survivability of publicity rights as an open question, engaging the maxim that a personal action dies with the person. Section 306 of the Indian Succession Act, 1925 and the absence of a fixed statutory post-mortem term leave heirs on uncertain ground.
How do you register your name or catchphrase as a trademark in India?
You register a name, stage name or catchphrase by filing a trademark application with the Trade Marks Registry under the Trade Marks Act, 1999, in the classes covering the goods and services you use it for, provided it is distinctive and identifies you as the source. Registration adds statutory infringement remedies to the common-law passing-off action and makes personality-rights enforcement cleaner. Celebrities increasingly register catchphrases, signatures and stage names for this reason.
References
Case Law
- Abhishek Bachchan v. The Bollywood Tee Shop & Ors. (Delhi High Court, 2025)
- Aishwarya Rai Bachchan v. Aishwaryaworld.com & Ors., 2025 SCC OnLine Del 5943 (Delhi High Court, 2025)
- Amitabh Bachchan v. Rajat Nagi & Ors., CS(COMM) 819/2022 (Delhi High Court, 2022)
- Anil Kapoor v. Simply Life India & Ors., CS(COMM) 652/2023 (Delhi High Court, 2023)
- Arijit Singh v. Codible Ventures LLP & Ors., 2024 SCC OnLine Bom 2445 (Bombay High Court, 2024)
- Asha Bhosle v. Mayk Inc. & Ors. (Bombay High Court, 2025). LiveLaw report (temporary link; Indian Kanoon URL pending on next refresh)
- D.M. Entertainment Pvt. Ltd. v. Baby Gift House & Ors., CS(OS) 893/2002; 2010 SCC OnLine Del 4790 (Delhi High Court, 2010). Not available as a free standalone judgment on Indian Kanoon
- Digital Collectibles Pte Ltd. v. Galactus Funware Technology Pvt. Ltd., CS(COMM) 108/2023 (Delhi High Court, 2023)
- Dr Devi Prasad Shetty v. Medicine Me & Ors., CS(COMM) 1053/2024 (Delhi High Court, 2024). Bar and Bench judgment PDF (temporary link; Indian Kanoon URL pending on next refresh)
- Gautam Gambhir v. D.A.P. & Co. (Delhi High Court, 13 December 2017)
- ICC Development (International) Ltd. v. Arvee Enterprises, 2003 (26) PTC 245 (Del) (Delhi High Court, 2003)
- Jaikishan Kakubhai Saraf (Jackie Shroff) v. The Peppy Store & Ors., 2024:DHC:4046 (Delhi High Court, 2024)
- Jubin Nautiyal v. John Doe & Ors., CS(COMM) 166/2026 (Delhi High Court, 2026). SCC Online blog report (temporary link; Indian Kanoon URL pending on next refresh)
- Karan Johar v. Ashok Kumar/John Doe & Ors. (Delhi High Court, 2025-2026)
- K.S. Puttaswamy v. Union of India, (2017) 10 SCC 1 (Supreme Court, 2017)
- Krishna Kishore Singh v. Sarla A. Saraogi & Ors., CS(COMM) 187/2021 (Delhi High Court, 2021 and 2023). See also the 11 July 2023 order
- Nagarjuna Akkineni v. Various Online Platforms (Delhi High Court, 2025). LiveLaw report (temporary link; Indian Kanoon URL pending on next refresh)
- R. Rajagopal v. State of Tamil Nadu, (1994) 6 SCC 632 (Supreme Court, 1994)
- Ravi Kishan v. John Doe & Ors. (Delhi High Court, 2026). LiveLaw report (temporary link; Indian Kanoon URL pending on next refresh)
- Salman Khan v. Ashok Kumar/John Doe & Ors. (re “Kala Hiran: The Battle for Legacy”) (Delhi High Court, 27 July 2026). LawBeat report (temporary link; Indian Kanoon URL pending on next refresh)
- Shivaji Rao Gaikwad (Rajinikanth) v. Varsha Productions (Madras High Court, 2015)
- Sri Sri Ravi Shankar v. John Doe & Ors. (Delhi High Court, 2025). LiveLaw report (temporary link; Indian Kanoon URL pending on next refresh)
- Titan Industries Ltd. v. M/s Ramkumar Jewellers, 2012 (50) PTC 486 (Del) (Delhi High Court, 2012)
Statutes
- Indian Succession Act, 1925. Section cited: 306
- Constitution of India, 1950. Article 21; Article 19(1)(a)
- Copyright Act, 1957. Sections cited: 38B, 57
- Trade Marks Act, 1999. Sections cited: 2, 9
- Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021. Rule 3 (intermediary due diligence and takedown)
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. For specific legal guidance, consult a qualified legal professional.
