The Delhi High Court (HC) has refused to grant a blanket order protecting the personality rights of Member of Parliament (MP) Raghav Chadha, directing the removal of content from six documents he flagged. The more consequential part is that the HC told X to hand over the subscriber data and IP logs behind the accounts that posted the flagged content.
Justice Subramonium Prasad directed the intermediary to provide Chadha with Basic Subscriber Information (BSI) and IP logs for the accounts linked to the flagged content within two weeks, according to a report by Bar & Bench.
The disclosure is the part to watch: The order tells the platform to identify the people behind anonymous accounts. An IP address can reveal a user’s broad location and Internet Service Provider (ISP), which investigators then use to seek the registered address from the ISP or subscriber details from a telecom operator. For anonymous posters, that removes the shield that lets them criticise the powerful without reprisal.
A court-ordered version of a wider pattern: Compelled disclosure of X user data has become a recurring means of unmasking critics in India, largely driven by police investigations:
- In April 2026, Delhi Police sought IP addresses and port details of all active sessions for accounts that criticised food regulator FSSAI, under Section 94 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita (BNSS).
- Days later, Telangana Police invoked Section 43F of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA), an anti-terror law, to demand registration information and usage logs of news handle TeluguScribe.
The Internet Freedom Foundation (IFF) called the Telangana notice an illegal abuse of an anti-terror statute against protected speech. The Chadha order extends the same disclosure mechanism from police notices to a judicial order.
What did Chadha seek? Chadha moved the court against artificial intelligence (AI)-generated deepfakes, manipulated videos, synthetic voice clones, morphed visuals and fabricated speeches. Some images showed him in a saree, and one showed Prime Minister Narendra Modi showering money on him, content that appeared after his April defection from the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) to the BJP. His counsel argued the posts were profane and defamatory and suggested he had sold himself for money.
The court drew a line at political criticism. Justice Prasad held the dispute looked like defamation and distinguished it from a personality rights violation. “As a political leader, can you be so sensitive?” he asked, invoking RK Laxman’s cartoons to note that Indians have criticised political decisions since independence.
How does this differ from earlier deepfake cases? The Delhi HC has become the main forum for personality rights claims against AI misuse, and has granted sweeping protection in most of them:
- It restrained AI-generated and deepfake exploitation of Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, Abhishek Bachchan, and filmmaker Karan Johar,…
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