Delhi High Court protects personality rights of singer Kumar Sanu

The Delhi High Court has granted interim injunction protecting singer Kumar Sanu's personality rights [Kumar Sanu Bhattacharjee vs Jammable Limited & Ors.]

Justice Manmeet Pritam Singh Arora has restrained the misuse of Kumar Sanu's name, likeness, image, voice, personality or any other aspects of his persona for commercial purposes till the next date of hearing on March 30, 2026.

The Court stated that prima facie, Kumar Sanu’s personality traits are protectable elements of his personality rights.

“Prima facie, the Plaintiff’s personality traits and/or parts thereof, including Plaintiff’s name Kumar Sanu, voice, image, photograph or likeness and other attributes are protectable elements of the Plaintiff’s personality rights. The Plaintiff is entitled to protect itself against morphed and distorted content which is demeaning,” the Court observed. 

In this regard, the Court cited observations made in similar cases concerning the personality rights of Bollywood personalities, Anil Kapoor, Karan Johar and Jackie Shroff. 

The Court proceeded to order Amazon and Flipkart to take down listings found violating Sanu's rights. Further, two e-commerce sellers were restrained from selling merchandise that infringes on his personality rights.

Google and Meta were directed to take down various infringing content highlighted in Sanu's petition, as well as fresh material brought to their notice in the future by Sanu.

The Court further directed them to provide Basic Subscriber Information (BSI) details of the anonymous accounts found sharing such infringing content, within three weeks.

The Central Government’s Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) and Department of Telecommunications (DoT) were directed to suspend URL links, websites and mobile applications and any other fresh content flagged by Sanu.

The Court was hearing a ₹2 crore suit filed by the singer, in which he sued several artificial intelligence-based platforms, online intermediaries, digital entities, and unknown persons (defendants) found uploading content by allegedly misusing attributes of Sanu's personality.

He stated that the defendants created fake and morphed content imitating Sanu, impersonated him on social media, sold merchandise using his photos, and even ran an app on Google Play Store which misused his personality rights. 

Sanu had argued that his personality has unique distinctiveness and commercial value.

During hearings of the matter, Advocate Sana Raees Khan appeared for Sanu and argued that the defendants' acts violated Sanu's privacy, goodwill, reputation and rights under the Copyright Act, 1957.

“The names 'Kumar Sanu', 'Sanu Da' and the title 'The Melody King of Bollywood', have two layers of protection, i.e., protectable under the Plaintiff's Personality/ Publicity Rights (in respect of which misappropriation does not require confusion) and protectable under Trade Mark Law and/or Passing Off (which requires a likelihood of confusion either as to the source of goods or association),” Sanu's suit said.

Sanu particularly highlighted the misuse of artificial intelligence to make distorted artificial sound recordings of his voice, the sale of merchandise and Graphic Interchange Formats (GIFs) bearing his name, image, likeness and caricature, which he contended brought him disrepute and made him the subject of “unsavoury humour." These audios, videos, and merchandise are shared across social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube, he pointed out.

Advocates Sana Raees Khan, Shikha Sachdeva, Kriti Rathi and Annie Jacob appeared for Kumar Sanu.

Advocates Varun Pathak, Yash Karunakaran and Debditya Saha appeared for Meta (Facebook).

Advocates Shilpa Gupta and Surabhi Pande appeared for Flipkart.

Advocates Vivek Ayyagari and Abhinav Bhalla appeared for Amazon.

Central Government Standing Counsel Nidhi Raman with advocate Om Ram appeared for MeitY and DoT.

Advocate Aditya Gupta appeared for Google. 

[Read order]