LSG Owner and Industrialist Sanjiv Goenka Moves Delhi High Court Seeking Personality Rights Protection

Industrialist and owner of the IPL team Lucknow Super Giants, Sanjiv Goenka, has moved the Delhi High Court alleging misuse of his likeness through deepfakes and morphed content.

A bench of Justice Tushar Rao Gedela was taken through multiple images and videos in which Goenka's face was allegedly superimposed to depict false incidents, including one suggesting he was “assaulting” team captain KL Rahul.

Counsel for Goenka pointed to several URLs where his likeness had been used “to create an incident will never happen,” including visuals showing a fabricated altercation with Rahul.

Describing one such image, counsel submitted that “my face is morphed… and the team captain… has his face on my lap,” calling the material “in very poor taste.”

Other content included Goenka's face morphed onto “a character of a fool,” as well as videos containing expletives and fabricated narratives, including false suggestions of violent incidents.

Emphasising reputational harm, counsel argued that Goenka, as a business leader responsible for thousands of employees, was being targeted in a manner that directly impacts institutional credibility. The association with cricketers, it was submitted, arises solely because “he owns the team.”

“Look at the impact… that the leader of the institution is being treated in this fashion,” counsel said.

The plaintiff distinguished such content from legitimate parody, arguing that the material went beyond humor into malicious fabrication.

Appearing for intermediaries including Google, Meta, and X, counsel submitted that there was “no difficulty” in taking down content involving deepfakes, face morphing, defamation, or explicit material.

However, Meta cautioned that “there's no technology… to censor me pre-publication” and warned that broad orders could allow a plaintiff to become a “judge in its own cause” and effectively “clean up the internet” of even benign content.

Justice Gedela observed that while public figures are often subject to satire, industrialists who are “quietly working in their own fronts” may have more sensitive privacy concerns.

Reflecting on changing digital discourse, the court remarked that “over the time we have lost that patience… humour… tolerance… otherwise many of these things could have been just ignored, laughed off.”

The court further clarified that while platforms should ordinarily comply with takedown requests, they may flag disputed content to the plaintiff. In such cases, parties would return to the Court for adjudication.