HC protects personality rights of preacher Aniruddhacharya

The Delhi High Court has protected the personality rights of preacher Aniruddhacharya, who is also popular as ‘Pookie’ Baba, and restrained the unauthorised use of his name, voice and image for creating memes, videos or any other content, including AI or deepfake content.

Justice Tushar Rao Gedela passed the interim order on March 30 on a lawsuit by Aniruddhacharya. The court also directed social media entities, Meta, X and Google to take down the offending content identified by the plaintiff, which unlawfully used or imitated his persona. The court opined that there was prima facie a strong case in favour of the plaintiff, who was a well-known, popular and well-accepted personality. The court stated that the nature of the content flagged by him was not “mere parody” and appeared to be disparaging and infringing on his personality rights.

It said the apprehension of dent and damage to the image and personality of the plaintiff, prima facie, appeared to be real and present.

Aniruddhacharya alleged that several entities were misappropriating the attributes of his personality without authorisation, licence, or consent, with the ulterior motive of deriving illegal commercial gain and free-riding upon his immense goodwill, commercial value, and reputation.