Delhi High Court protects personality rights of actress Kajol

The Delhi High Court has passed an interim order protecting the personality and publicity rights of actress Kajol.

In an order dated February 20, Justice Jyoti Singh restrained multiple platforms from using Kajol’s name, image, voice, likeness and other attributes of her persona without authorisation.

Kajol had filed a commercial suit against various parties, including e-commerce websites, social media accounts and artificial intelligence platforms (defendants). These include Kash Collective, Pinkswag, Nazrrco, Amazon, Meta Platforms Inc., YouTube, SpicyChat.ai and Talkie-ai.com, among others.

She alleged that the defendants were selling merchandise bearing her name and photographs, creating AI-generated content and chatbots using her persona, and hosting morphed and pornographic material.

The Court recorded that Kajol has trademark registrations in the mark “KAJOL” and claimed protection of her personality and publicity rights, statutory trademark rights and common law rights against passing off.

After examining the material on record, the Court held that Kajol had shown sufficient grounds for the grant of temporary protection and that she would suffer harm if such an order was not passed.

"Plaintiff (Kajol) is entitled to protection against dissemination of morphed and pornographic content as well as AI generated images portraying her in inappropriate clothing, false settings and inappropriate scenarios with other celebrities in the film industry. Such a distasteful content is harming and damaging the reputation of the Plaintiff and may mislead the public into believing what is depicted may be true," observed the Court.

Accordingly, the Court restrained the defendants from using or exploiting Kajol’s name, including specifics such as "Kajol", "Kajol Mukherjee", "Kajol Devgan" and "Kajol Mukherjee Devgan".

It also restrained the use of her image, voice and likeness for commercial or personal gain, including through artificial intelligence, deepfakes and AI chatbots.

Kash Collective, Pinkswag, Nazrrco and Amazon have been directed to stop selling and remove from their platforms merchandise bearing her name or image.

The Court also directed social media platforms and websites to remove the content flagged in the order within 72 hours and to provide details of the accounts involved.

It further ordered the Department of Telecommunications and the Union Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology to block and disable specified websites identified in the order within 72 hours of receiving the order.

The matter is listed for further hearing on April 23, 2026.

Advocates Pravin Anand, Ameet Naik, Dhruv Anand, Madhu Gadodia, Udita Patro, Dhananjay Khanna, Nimrat Singh, Unnati Gambani, Bhavya Verma and Pranav Nair represented Kajol (plaintiff).

Amazon was represented by advocates Akshay Maloo and Brinda Nagaraja.

Meta Platforms Inc. were represented by advocates Varun Pathak, Radhika Roy and Debditya Saha.

Advocates Mamta Rani Jha, Rohan Ahuja, Shruttima Ehersa and Ankit Tripathi appeared for YouTube.

[Read Order]