Gautam Gambhir Withdraws His Plea For Interim Relief In Personality Rights Suit Before Delhi High Court

The Delhi High Court on Monday allowed Indian cricket coach Gautam Gambhir to withdraw his application seeking interim injunction in a personality rights suit after the court pointed out serious defects in the pleadings and the absence of specific “takedown” prayers identifying the allegedly infringing content.

The application was withdrawn after Justice Jyoti Singh observed during the hearing that the plaintiff had not provided a defendant-wise and URL-wise list of content sought to be removed, making it difficult for the court to grant effective relief.

When the matter was taken up after lunch, counsel for Gambhir sought permission to withdraw the interim injunction application.

Recording the request, the court ordered:

“Counsel for the plaintiff seeks to withdraw this application with liberty to file a fresh application with same cause of action with complete and better particulars. The application is disposed of as withdrawn with liberty as prayer for.”

Earlier in the day, the court had expressed dissatisfaction with the drafting of the application, noting that the prayer clause did not contain specific directions for the removal of content.

Referring to the pleadings, the Court remarked, “Where are your takedown prayers? Nothing? What are you doing?”

The Court said that without identifying which defendant uploaded which content, no workable order could be passed.

“You are supposed to say in the prayer, this is the defendant, this is the URL, takedown… this one will takedown this,” the court observed, stressing the need for a proper defendant-wise and URL-wise table.

Gambhir's counsel submitted that the injunction sought was intended to be broad enough to cover all infringing material, but the Court questioned the legal feasibility of such a formulation, asking, “Look at your prayer. Where is it all encompassing?”

Counsel for intermediaries, including Meta and Google, submitted that they had no difficulty complying with court-ordered removals but said that vague prayers create technical difficulties because platforms can act only when specific URLs are identified.

One of the counsel stated that “technically, because I am an intermediary, injunction can't operate against me because I only take down content.”

The Court then passed over the matter to 2:30 pm, asking Gambhir's counsel, Advocate Jai Anant Dehadrai, to sit with Meta's counsel and prepare a table identifying the allegedly infringing content. Post-lunch, he expressed his desire to withdraw the present interim relief application so as to file a fresh one.

Gambhir has sought Rs 2.5 crore as damages from the defendants, including unknown entities, alleging misuse of his name, image, and likeness for commercial gain and misinformation campaigns.