Delhi High Court orders takedown of Aam Aadmi Party's deepfakes

The Delhi High Court on Friday ordered social media platforms to take down six posts published from the Aam Aadmi Party's official and verified handles that depict Delhi Chief Minister Rekha Gupta as a liquor vendor, hawker and delivery agent, with Justice Manoj Jain holding that the AI-generated content is not permissible political satire.

The order came in a defamation suit Gupta filed against AAP and others, including the social media intermediaries X Corp and Meta Platforms, The Indian Express reported. The suit seeks a permanent injunction and damages, and alleges that the posts also showed her as the head of a fictitious "Har Har Rekha or Ghar Ghar Theka Yojana."

Justice Jain said the posts crossed from commentary into attack. "Healthy criticism and satirical humor may not raise any eyebrow, but the AI-generated videos and posts in question have clearly breached the dividing line as the contents are not only defamatory and offensive but also attack the dignity of a woman having constitutional authority," the court said, The Times of India reported.

The court rejected the defense that the material was protected speech. "In the garb of freedom of speech and expression and under the disguise of humour and satire, no one can be permitted to be reduced to an object of ridicule and insult," it said, The Hindu reported. LiveLaw reported the court's companion line: "Satire may though hurt conscience of any individual but it cannot be permitted to create irreparable wound on someone's dignity."

The bench directed defendants 3, 4 and 5, the intermediaries, to take down the six URLs listed in the plaint forthwith, and recorded compliance terms under Order XXXIX Rule 3 of the Code of Civil Procedure, according to the legal site LawChakra, which published the order's case details. Five of the six URLs were posts or videos on X and one was a video on Facebook, The Indian Express reported.

One video, posted on X on November 4, had drawn about 75,000 views, 1,600 likes and 470 reposts when a screenshot of it was captured, The Hindu reported, citing the plaint. The court noted that the material showed the Chief Minister serving drinks to men at night and, in one clip, pouring liquor and ice cubes alongside the deputy chief minister, The Hindu reported. The Indian Express named the deputy chief minister as Parvesh Sahib Singh.

Justice Jain found that Gupta had made out a prima facie case and that the balance of convenience lay in her favor, citing the speed at which such content travels on social media. The court issued summons to the defendants and gave them 30 days from service to file written statements.

The findings are interim. Gupta's suit has yet to be tried, and the court has given no final ruling on whether the content is defamatory. AAP and the other defendants did not appear at the November 6 hearing despite advance notice by email, so the order was passed without their argument, LawChakra reported. The Hindustan Times reported that counsel for the plaintiff was Sameer Rohatgi and that no one appeared for the Aam Aadmi Party.

The court cited an earlier Delhi High Court ruling in the Raghav Chadha case, and observed that until the publication of such content is regulated by a stringent law, judges must weigh whether the use of AI crosses the threshold of infringing a person's right to dignity, The Times of India reported.

For creators who use generative tools for political video, the order signals that Indian courts are willing to treat near-real synthetic depictions of officials as actionable at the interim stage, before any trial. The threshold the bench set is dignity rather than parody, which leaves ordinary political mockery untouched on the face of the order and the boundary to be argued case by case.

The case, Smt Rekha Gupta v. Aam Aadmi Party & Ors., is listed for further hearing on December 4, 2026.