On October 9, 2026, Justice Anup Jairam Bhambhani of the Delhi High Court told a hearing in actor Janhvi Kapoor's suit: "Personality rights are being misused to cover up wrongdoing. There is no confidentiality about wrongdoing. There is no privacy about wrongdoing." According to MediaNama's report of the hearing, he also said public figures need "a thicker skin". He gave the example of a person under investigation for a Rs 5,000 crore bank fraud who asks a court to block coverage because it harms their image.
The remarks matter beyond one actor's suit. Personality-rights litigation in India is one of the fastest routes by which speech about public figures ends up on a platform's takedown list.
The case for strong personality rights
The strongest argument for these rights is real. Generative AI makes it cheap to fabricate a person's face, voice and body. Kapoor's counsel, Asav Rajan, argued that her claim is limited to AI-generated content, merchandise and commercial misuse, and that none of her challenged links target criticism. Where morphed or obscene synthetic images are involved, he argued, they should come down immediately, without a community-standards obscenity inquiry. Anyone who has watched a fabricated sexual image circulate would sympathise. A remedy that arrives after weeks of litigation is no remedy.
Rajan also argued that personality rights belong to everyone, not only celebrities, and that fame affects only the quantum of commercial harm. That is a fair point. Ordinary people are the least able to fund a High Court suit and the most exposed to deepfake abuse.
Where the line has to fall
The difficulty is that the same legal vehicle serves two very different purposes. One is stopping fabricated or commercially exploitative content. The other is suppressing true, unflattering reporting. Justice Bhambhani's remarks draw the line between them. He contrasted news reporting, such as a celebrity photographed at a book launch, with a privacy intrusion, such as a photograph taken in a restaurant. He asked whether a celebrity can "not fall from grace", and answered that "the fans should know".
That position has a long pedigree. In R. Rajagopal v. State of Tamil Nadu (1994), the Supreme Court held that matters on the public record can be published and commented on without consent. It also held that officials cannot claim privacy damages over conduct relevant to their official duties, absent reckless disregard for the truth, and that prior restraint is disfavoured. The same judgment protects victims of sexual assault, so it already separates the two purposes. A personality-rights doctrine built on it would protect fabricated sexual content and merchandise piracy while leaving the public record open.
The bench is hearing Kapoor's suit together with suits by Vivek Oberoi and Aaradhya Bachchan to define the scope of these rights. Two court-appointed amici curiae have finished their arguments, and Rajan resumes on October 12. This is a chance to write the boundary down once, rather than leave it to a string of ex parte interim orders.
Why platforms are the pressure point
The practical effect of any personality-rights order lands on intermediaries. In the Bachchan suits in 2025, the same court observed at a hearing on September 10 that content on YouTube could be handled by directing Google to take it down, while other platforms would need URL-specific notices, as LiveLaw reported. The court also questioned whether listing URLs in a public order might itself cause harm. That URL-by-URL approach is the right instinct. It makes a judge, not a trust-and-safety team, decide what is unlawful.
The Supreme Court set that principle in Shreya Singhal v. Union of India, decided on March 24, 2015. It struck down Section 66A of the IT Act. It also read down Section 79(3)(b) so that an intermediary's knowledge of unlawful content must come from a court order or a government notification relating to Article 19(2). It read down Rule 3(4) so that knowledge comes only through a court order. The reasoning was practical. If platforms must adjudicate every complaint themselves, they remove first and ask questions never.
A broad personality-rights regime without a clear speech carve-out would recreate that problem. A celebrity's lawyer sends a notice and a platform that fears losing safe harbour complies. Journalists and critics find their posts gone without a hearing.
What a proportionate rule looks like
The court has several options that protect individuals without chilling criticism.
- Separate the claims. Treat AI-fabricated sexual or deceptive content and unlicensed merchandise as the core of the right, with fast-track relief.
- Exclude the public record and reporting on misconduct. The judge's "no privacy about wrongdoing" line should be written into the test, not left in an oral remark.
- Require specificity. Orders should name URLs or accounts and be reviewed once the defendants are identified, rather than operate as open-ended blocking directions.
- Keep the court as the trigger. Platforms should act on orders, not on a celebrity's own assessment that coverage is harmful.
One caution applies. The reported remarks are oral observations at a hearing, not a judgment, and arguments continue on October 12. The bench has not yet ruled on how the amici's proposals, including a reported five-category test for who counts as a celebrity, will shape the final doctrine. Oral remarks do not bind later benches.
Still, the direction is right. A personality right that protects people from being counterfeited is worth having. One that lets the powerful scrub true stories from the internet would cost the open web far more than it protects.