Delhi High Court allows plea to be withdrawn after petitioner cites fake, AI-generated case laws

The Delhi High Court on Thursday dismissed as withdrawn a petition filed by the Greenopolis Welfare Association (GWA) after respondents objected that the petition relied on fabricated extracts of Supreme Court judgments, allegedly generated through Artificial Intelligence (AI). [Greenopolis Welfare Association Vs Narender Singh]

Justice Girish Kathpalia, who heard the case, said,

"All learned senior counsel and counsel appearing for respondents submit that they would take appropriate steps since some of the judicial precedents cited on behalf of petitioner do not even exist and in some of the precedents, the quoted portions do not exist. At request of both sides, it is made clear that submissions advanced today were confined only to the impugned orders and nothing else.”

Thus, the Court permitted the petitioner to withdraw the plea.

The case originated from proceedings before the District Judge (East), Karkardooma Courts. GWA, a society registered under the Societies Registration Act, 1860, had moved the High Court under Article 227 of the Constitution and Section 115 of the Civil Procedure Code (CPC) against a series of interlocutory orders passed in September 2025.

The impugned orders included permission to implead 17 additional plaintiffs without amended pleadings, advancement of hearings with curtailed time for filing a written statement and acceptance of applications for discovery and early hearing without supporting affidavits.

GWA argued that the orders were arbitrary and procedurally irregular, and that the proceedings were being pushed forward at an unreasonably fast pace. It further claimed that most of the impleaded plaintiffs were not even members of the society, with the only individual ever enrolled having been terminated from membership on September 2, 2025.

The controversy sharpened when the respondents filed a compilation showing that several passages attributed by GWA to landmark Supreme Court rulings were fabricated or misquoted.

Among the examples highlighted were:

• A reference to paragraph 73 of Raj Narain v. Indira Nehru Gandhi (1972) 3 SCC 850, even though the judgment contains only 27 paragraphs.

• Extracts in Revajeetu Builders v. Narayanaswamy and Salem Advocate Bar Assn. (II) v. Union of India that were either truncated or altered.

• Citations from Dalip Singh v. State of UP and Kranti Associates v. Masood Ahmed Khan that did not match the reported text.

• A non-existent judgment from Delhi Law Times.

According to the respondents, these extracts had not been drawn from authentic reporters such as Supreme Court Cases (SCC) but were instead generated by ChatGPT. They argued that this amounted to presenting false evidence before the Court and sought permission to initiate criminal action.

The petitioners were represented by Senior Advocate Rakesh Tiku with Advocates Gaurav Kohli and Ashish.

The respondents were represented by Senior Advocates N Hariharan, Sanjoy Ghose and Abhijat along with Advocate Ajay SabharwalPrateek Bhalla, Punya Rekha Angara, Aman Akhtar, Vasundhara N, Sana Singh, Vasundhara Raj Tyagi, Arjan Singh Mandla, Gauri Ramachandran, Jai Sikand, Anuj Aggarwal, Neeraj Dev Gaur, Tushar Sannu and Shaoni Das

[Read Order]