Gautam Gambhir moves Delhi High Court for protection of personality rights; seeks ₹2.5 crore damages

Indian men's national cricket team coach Gautam Gambhir has approached the Delhi High Court seeking protection of his personality and and publicity rights.

He has sought damages of ₹2.5 crore against entities misusing his name and images to market and sell merchandise and also employing Artificial Intelligence (AI) videos and deepfakes to spread misinformation.

He also sought directions to take down of such infringing content.

Gambhir joins the line of a long list of celebrities including Bollywood actors and cricketers who have filed similar petitions before the High Court.

According to a press statement, there is a coordinated campaign of digital impersonation, AI-generated deepfakes, and unauthorised commercial exploitation of Gambhir's personality.

As per the press release, beginning in 2025, Gambhir's legal team documented a sharp and alarming increase in fabricated digital content across Instagram, X (formerly Twitter), YouTube, and Facebook.

Multiple accounts deployed artificial intelligence, face-swapping, and voice-cloning technologies to create realistic videos falsely depicting Gambhir making statements he never made — including a fraudulent "resignation announcement" that garnered over 29 lakh views.

Beyond social media, major e-commerce platforms were facilitating the sale of posters and merchandise bearing his name and likeness without any authorisation, the press statement said.

Gambhir's suit has been filed against 16 defendants including identified social media accounts (JanKey Frames, Bhupendra Paintola, Legends Revolution, gustakhedits, cricket_memer45, GemsOfCrickets, Crickaith, Sunny Upadhyay, @imRavY_), e-commerce platforms (Amazon, Flipkart), platform intermediaries (Meta Platforms Inc., X Corp., Google LLC / YouTube), and the Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology and Department of Telecommunications as proforma parties to facilitate implementation of any court order.

The suit has invoked the Copyright Act 1957, Trade Marks Act 1999, and the Commercial Courts Act 2015, and the High Court's previous orders in the personality rights cases of Amitabh Bachchan, Anil Kapoor and Sunil Gavaskar.

Damages of ₹2.5 crore have been claimed alongside prayers for rendition of accounts, permanent injunction and takedown of all infringing content.

The suit has been filed through advocate Jai Anant Dehadrai.