Delhi HC bars unauthorized use of Amitabh Bachchan's name, voice and image

Amitabh Bachchan walked into the Delhi High Court with a problem that had grown quietly into something larger than any single scheme. People were using his name, his voice, his face—without asking, without paying, without permission—to sell things. A lottery in Gujarat that borrowed the KBC logo and plastered his photographs across it, claiming winners who never existed. T-shirts bearing his image. Posters. A video call service where callers could speak to someone impersonating him. Domain names registered in his name. The list kept growing, and Bachchan's legal team had no way of knowing how many others were out there doing the same thing.

On Friday, Justice Navin Chawla of the Delhi High Court issued an interim injunction that barred these activities outright. The order was sweeping in scope—it restrained not just the defendants who had been identified and served notice, but also unknown parties through what's called a John Doe action, a legal mechanism that allows courts to issue orders against people whose identities are not yet established. Senior Advocate Harish Salve, representing Bachchan, had argued the case with particular force around the lottery scheme. "This nonsense has been going on for a while," Salve told the court. The Gujarat lottery, he said, appeared to be an outright scam—no actual lottery, no real winners, just Bachchan's name and face used to lend credibility to something fraudulent.

What made the court's decision significant was not just the injunction itself, but the reasoning behind it. Justice Chawla acknowledged that Bachchan is undeniably a well-known personality, represented in numerous advertisements, and that his celebrity status carries commercial value. The defendants, the court found, had been exploiting that status without authorization to promote their own goods and services. The judge noted that such unauthorized use could cause Bachchan "grave loss and irreparable injury"—and beyond the financial harm, it risked bringing disrepute to him. A fake lottery bearing his name, a voice impersonation service, merchandise he never endorsed—these were not merely commercial infringements. They were uses of his identity in contexts he could not control, with consequences he could not predict.

Salve had also flagged the domain names registered in Bachchan's name, another layer of the unauthorized appropriation. Each of these activities—the lottery, the merchandise, the video call facility, the domain registrations—had occurred without his knowledge or consent. The court's ex-parte injunction, granted without the defendants appearing to argue their side, reflected the judge's assessment that Bachchan had made out a strong enough case on the face of it to warrant immediate protection.

The order sets a marker for how Indian courts will treat celebrity publicity rights going forward. The concept itself—that a public figure's name, voice, and image constitute a form of property that can be protected from unauthorized commercial use—is not new in principle, but its application here is notably broad. The John Doe component means the injunction extends beyond the specific defendants identified to anyone else attempting similar exploitation, a recognition that the problem is not contained to a handful of bad actors but is diffuse and ongoing. Bachchan's legal team, represented also by Advocate Pravin Anand, had sought exactly this kind of comprehensive protection, and the court granted it. What happens next depends on enforcement and on whether the defendants, once they learn of the order, comply or attempt to challenge it.