Delhi High Court: In a case concerning the alleged misuse of Janhvi Kapoor’s personality rights through several URLs, social media accounts and other digital material, a Single Judge Bench of A.J. Bhambhani, J., declined to grant a blanket injunction against all 6884 URLs forming subject-matter of the proceedings. The Court held that the claims and prayers were over-broad and directed Janhvi Kapoor to segregate the impugned URLs into 3 categories, namely, ex facie pornographic and sexually vulgar content, content directly monetising Janhvi Kapoor’s personality rights, and content indirectly promoting sale of merchandise and services by using Janhvi Kapoor’s name and likeness.
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On a preliminary appreciation, the Court found that the URLs at Serial Nos. 1—552 appeared ex facie to contain grossly sexually vulgar/pornographic content and evidently did not carry Janhvi Kapoor’s permission. Finding that Janhvi Kapoor had made out a prima facie case, and that the balance of convenience and irreparable injury also weighed in its favour, the Court directed Defendants 20 and 21 to forthwith remove/takedown the said URLs within 3 weeks.
Janhvi Kapoor instituted the present proceedings and, by way of an application under Order 39 Rules 1 and 2 read with Section 151, Civil Procedure Code, 1908 (CPC), sought an ex parte ad interim injunction against the defendants in respect of a large number of URLs, social media accounts and other digital material. The relief sought extended to a total of 6884 URLs across various categories. Upon issuance of notice, learned counsel appeared on behalf of certain defendants on advance copy, accepted notice and sought time to file replies. The Court also directed that notice be issued to the remaining defendants by all permissible modes, upon Janhvi Kapoor taking steps.
After a detailed hearing, the Court was of the view that the claims in the plaint and the prayers sought in the application were over-broad, both having regard to the nature of relief sought and the fact that relief had been claimed against 6884 URLs across various categories. The Court was, accordingly, not inclined to grant a blanket order injuncting or directing the removal/take-down of all 6884 URLs. The Court further directed Janhvi Kapoor to set out, in tabular form, the thousands of URLs, social media accounts and other digital material pertaining to Janhvi Kapoor, classifying them into 3 categories:
- content that is ex facie pornographic and sexually vulgar;
- content that can ex facie be seen to be directly monetising Janhvi Kapoor’s personality rights; and
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content that uses the name and likeness of Janhvi Kapoor to indirectly promote sale of merchandise and services.
At the same time, on a preliminary appreciation of the matter, the Court found that the impugned URLs appearing at Serial Nos. 1—552 of the annexure to the plaint appeared ex facie to be grossly sexually vulgar/pornographic content and evidently did not carry any permission from Janhvi Kapoor. The Court was, therefore, of the view that, to that extent, Janhvi Kapoor had succeeded in making out a prima facie case in its favour, that the balance of convenience also lay in favour of Janhvi Kapoor and against the defendants, and that irreparable loss and injury would be caused to Janhvi Kapoor if interim protection was not granted.
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The Court directed Defendants 20 and 21 to forthwith remove/takedown the impugned URLs appearing at Serial Nos. 1—552 of the annexure to the plaint within 3 weeks. The Court thus declined to grant Janhvi Kapoor a blanket injunction in respect of all 6884 URLs, while granting interim protection in respect of the URLs which, on a preliminary appreciation, appeared ex facie to contain grossly sexually vulgar/pornographic content without Janhvi Kapoor’s permission. The matter was directed to be renotified before the Court on 17 August 2026.
On hearing dated 17 August 2026 Janhvi Kapoor submitted that, in compliance with the directions contained in the last order dated 11 August 2026, a segregated compilation of the several URLs had been prepared and was being carried for the perusal of the Court. However, it was not possible for the Court to take up the present matter on that day. Accordingly, the Court directed that the matter be renotified on 3 September 2026 in the post-lunch session.
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[Janhvi Kapoor v. Ashok Kumar/John Doe, 2026 SCC OnLine Del 6408, decided on 17-8-2026]
Advocates who appeared in this case:
For the Plaintiff: Asav Rajan, Abha Shah, Kashish Chadha, Devana Shrotriya, Aditya Shah and Ragahv Bansal, Advocates
For the Defendants: Varun Pathak, Sana Banyal and Ranvir Batra, Mamta Rani Jha, Rohan Ahuja, Shruttima Ehersa, Ankit Tripathi, Debadarshini, Aiswarya, Jahanvi Agarwal, Madhav Khosla, Nirupam Lodha, Kshitij Parashar, Gautam Wadhwa, Abhineet Kalia, Shivani Chaoudhery, Md. Kamran, Nidhi Raman, CGSC, Manish Rawat, GP, Mohit B., Abhishek Mohanpuria and Rishay Raj, Advocates.
