‘Khamosh’: Bombay HC grants interim relief to Shatrughan Sinha, restrains social media, AI platforms from exploiting personality rights

The order was made available on Saturday.

A single-judge bench of Justice Sharmila U Deshmukh observed, “Prima facie, there cannot be any debate about goodwill and reputation of the plaintiff as well as his remarkable and unparalleled contribution to the film industry. The plaintiff has his official social media channels which has followers in lakhs,” the court order records.

The court also recorded that Sinha “has unique style of dialogue delivery and is especially known for the unique manner of delivery of term ‘Khamosh’, which is widely recognised and associated with the plaintiff”.

Advocates Hiren Kamod, Nidhi Singh, Abha Shah and Amisha Upadhyay claimed that Sinha’s “personality attributes constitutes his valuable personality rights which has been unauthorisedly commercially exploited and misused in various mediums by the Defendants and the Defendants are also liable for committing tort of passing-off”.

The actor also sought urgent interim relief, alleging large-scale misuse of his identity through counterfeit merchandise, among others.

Kamod also alleged that various platforms were creating, publishing and circulating fabricated and manipulated content impersonating Sinha through obscene, morphed, pornographic video-graphs and fake endorsements and the same was required to be restrained.

After perusing submissions, the high court observed, “In the present case, there is sufficient material which is produced on record to demonstrate the violation of the plaintiff’s personality rights. There cannot be any justification for misutilising the plaintiff’s personality for commercial exploitation which ultimately results into dilution and tarnishing the plaintiff’s image. The creation of digital content without the authority of the plaintiff and exploiting the same unauthorisedly violates the plaintiff’s right.”

Justice Deshmukh, therefore, “prima facie” opined, “Sinha’s name, likeness, image, persona, etc. deserves to be protected in view of the material which has been placed on record which prima facie demonstrate the infringement of the plaintiff’s personality rights and public rights and violate his privacy.”

The high court will hear the plea next on March 30.

Other celebrities whose personality rights are protected by the Bombay HC

Sinha is one of the few celebrities who availed such a relief from the high court since last year. In October last year, the high court had protected the personality rights of Bollywood actor Akshay Kumar, citing “realistic nature of deep fake videos was alarming”.

The Bombay high court also protected the personal rights of veteran singer Asha Bhosle and Bollywood actor Suniel Shetty through interim orders last year. In 2024, the high court had protected the personality rights of singer Arijit Singh.

In December 2025, the vacation bench of the high court, in an interim order, had directed various platforms to delete and pull down links, posts, URLs and websites carrying allegedly morphed and manipulated images and videos of actor Shilpa Shetty.