Chandigarh court orders Facebook to suspend 3 AI video pages

A Chandigarh civil court has ordered Facebook to disable public access to or suspend three pages over AI-generated videos about Amandeep Kumar, a Batala lawyer and Punjab Congress figure, saying the content went "beyond healthy public criticism," in an interim injunction dated October 5, 2026.

According to the order, the pages are Batale Di Rajneeti, Kachi Laan and Thanedar Uncle. The court granted Kumar an interim injunction restraining the defendants from further disseminating, publishing or uploading AI-generated content involving him until the next hearing, and an ad-interim ex parte injunction directing Facebook, listed as defendant No. 4, to disable or suspend the three pages until then. The order was reported by The Indian Express, The Tribune, the Times of India, Bar and Bench and MediaNama.

The outlets disagree on the judge's title and the forum. The Tribune, the Times of India, Bar and Bench and MediaNama name the judge as Civil Judge (Junior Division) Kuldeep Singh, sitting in a Chandigarh civil court. The Indian Express described the judge as a Judicial Magistrate First Class and said Kumar approached the Punjab and Haryana High Court.

Kumar, also known as Amandeep Jaintipura, is described in the order as a frontrunner for the Congress ticket from Batala in the 2027 Punjab Assembly election. In a defamation suit, he alleged that the pages fabricated his visual representation with AI and portrayed him in a body, dress and appearance which he said he had never adopted, posed for or consented to. The suit alleged the videos branded him a drug dealer, an anti-social element and, in one instance, a dancer making "woman-like gestures." Bar and Bench reported that the court recorded one video appearing to show an AI-generated version of Kumar acting as a middleman for settling rape cases and suggesting the approach of Congress leader Partap Bajwa, and that the pages carried material favourable to Batala's sitting AAP MLA Aman Sher Singh, also known as Sherry Kalsi.

Kumar's suit put the pages' following at 2,200, 1,100 and 11,000, and the videos' reach at approximately 178,000, 180,000 and 47,800 views, according to The Indian Express. The Times of India reported the impugned content at nearly 3 lakh views.

The court found a prima facie case, irreparable loss and a balance of convenience in Kumar's favour, and held that the pages appeared to carry material calculated politically in favour of Punjab's ruling party. The October 5 order said: "The said pages appear to have a political agenda which is beyond healthy public criticism and apparently maligns the image of an individual without verified facts, knowingly. This is quite a serious act done in a very uncontrolled, casual manner, which may adversely affect the health of our democracy and the process of manufacturing of public consent, and the ruling party is responsible for controlling such acts."

MediaNama noted the injunction was granted ex parte, meaning the people running the pages were neither identified nor heard before it was passed. In the earlier Khaira matter, Meta told the court it was an intermediary with no knowledge of the content and would comply, MediaNama reported. MediaNama said it had asked Meta whether it treats a direction to suspend an entire page differently from an order to remove listed URLs, and that it would update the story with responses.

The order is the third in a year from the Chandigarh area directing Meta to act on AI-manipulated political content, per MediaNama. MediaNama, citing The Hindu, reported that a court in Mohali ordered the removal of 166 URLs carrying a fake video of Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann in October 2025. In August 2026, a Chandigarh Civil Judge directed Meta to take down a morphed video of Congress MLA Sukhpal Khaira within 72 hours, MediaNama reported.

Cases keep reaching civil judges because India's takedown route runs through them. MediaNama reported that the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology notified IT Rules amendments on synthetically generated information on February 10, 2026, requiring large platforms such as Facebook to have users declare and label AI-generated content. Under Rule 3(1)(d), a platform's duty to remove defamatory content arises only on a court order or a reasoned intimation from an authorised government officer, and the amendment cut the deadline to three hours, so a candidate without an officer to issue that intimation needs a court order to start the clock. Rule 3(2)(b) offers a faster route for impersonation, including "artificially morphed images," with removal due within two hours of a complaint, but it runs through the platform's own grievance officer. India's personality-rights practice has run parallel: on October 1, the Bombay High Court restrained the unauthorised use of actor Samantha Ruth Prabhu's name, image and voice, with Justice Madhav Jamdar finding prima facie violations of her personality and publicity rights under Articles 19(1)(a) and 21 of the Constitution and her performers' moral rights under Section 38B of the Copyright Act, in a suit with 18 defendants, as LiveLaw and India Today reported.

For creators, the case shows that page-wide suspensions now sit beside URL takedowns in how Indian courts handle political AI video. Whether Facebook disables the three pages is the open question.

The matter returns to the Chandigarh court on October 22, with notice given to the defendants through ordinary process.