Delhi High Court Grants Interim Relief to Kajol in Personality Rights Case
In a significant development in Kajol v Kash Collective & Ors, the Delhi High Court has granted interim protection to actress Kajol, safeguarding her personality and publicity rights against unauthorised commercial and digital exploitation.
The order was passed on February 20 by Justice Jyoti Singh, who restrained several platforms and entities from using Kajol’s name, image, voice, likeness and other elements associated with her identity without her consent.
Kajol had approached the Court by filing a commercial suit against various e-commerce portals, social media platforms and artificial intelligence based services. The defendants included Kash Collective, Pinkswag, Nazrrco, Amazon, Meta Platforms Inc., YouTube, SpicyChat.ai and Talkie-ai.com.
She alleged that these entities were selling merchandise bearing her name and photographs, creating AI-generated images and chatbots using her persona, and circulating morphed as well as pornographic material that misused her identity.
The Court noted that Kajol holds trademark registrations in the mark “KAJOL” and claimed protection under statutory trademark law, personality and publicity rights, and common law remedies against passing off.
After reviewing the material placed on record, the Court observed that Kajol had established a strong prima facie case. It further held that failure to grant temporary relief would result in serious and irreparable harm to her reputation.
“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 variations of her name such as “Kajol”, “Kajol Mukherjee”, “Kajol Devgan” and “Kajol Mukherjee Devgan” for any unauthorised purpose.
It also prohibited the use of her image, voice and likeness for commercial or personal gain, including through artificial intelligence tools, deepfakes and AI chatbots.
Certain e-commerce platforms were directed to immediately stop selling and remove merchandise bearing her name or image. Social media intermediaries and websites have been ordered to take down flagged content within 72 hours and disclose details of the accounts involved.
Additionally, the Department of Telecommunications and the Union Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology have been instructed to block identified websites within 72 hours of receiving the order.
The matter will be taken up next on April 23, 2026.
