The Karnataka High Court on Thursday ordered the removal of morphed, Artificial Intelligence (AI) generated content targeting the hereditary head of the Dharmasthala temple, Dr Veerendra Heggade [Sri Sheenappa v State of Karnataka]..A vacation bench comprising Justice SR Krishna Kumar passed the order on a petition seeking the removal of such content.Advocate S Rajashekhar appeared for the petitioner and submitted that defamatory content was being circulated on social media targetting Dr. Heggade and his family. "Each day around 30-40,000 devotees are visiting my temple. I am put to such an embarassing situation for no fault of mine. These are done by fake accounts. That is what I have lodged a complaint on," he argued.The Court proceeded to direct the State authorities to take steps to remove such morphed, manipulated or fabricated images and videos from social media platforms (Google, Instagram, Whatsapp etc.) within one week. .Last year, an Additional City Civil and Sessions Court had passed an order to take down similar defamatory content against the Dharmasthala temple, its Dharmadhikari Dr. D Veerendra Heggade, and his family, in connection with the Dharmasthala burials case.The case concerned allegations made by a former sanitation worker employed at the Dharmasthala Manjunathaswamy Temple that he had buried several bodies in Dharmasthala. The worker had claimed that he had been forced by his supervisors to bury numerous bodies, including those of women, for nearly two decades. While the complaint did not name specific individuals as accused in a crime, the revelations triggered significant public debate and media reportage. The sanitation worker was later booked on allegations of perjury by the Special Investigation Team (SIT) that was probing the burial case, after several inconsistencies were reportedly found in his statements.More recently, the Karnataka High Court had also advised a YouTuber against making videos on the issue, while staying a criminal case registered against him over a video he had uploaded.
