The Delhi High Court has permanently barred individuals and businesses from using Amitabh Bachchan's name, image, voice and likeness for commercial gain without his permission, bringing to a close a legal battle the veteran actor began four years ago against the unauthorised exploitation of his identity.
The order converts an interim injunction granted in November 2022 into a binding, permanent decree, and it extends the protection to anonymous online infringers who cannot be identified in advance.
Justice Purushaindra Kumar Kaurav passed the final decree on 5 November 2026 in the commercial suit Bachchan filed in 2022, titled Amitabh Bachchan v Rajat Nagi and others. The case was brought to stop the unauthorised use of the actor's identity across mobile applications, online domains, poster sales, merchandise and quiz books.
The court held that his name, likeness, voice and distinctive persona could not be commercially exploited without his express consent, and that such use falsely suggested his endorsement.
The decree was reached through two routes. Four of the defendants settled the dispute with Bachchan and acknowledged his publicity and privacy rights. They included Rajat Nagi, who had developed a mobile application titled "Amitabh Bachchan Video Call"; Manoj Publications, which had published a general knowledge quiz book carrying Bachchan's photograph; Tamatina, which sold posters bearing his images; and Mahesh Patel, who had registered the domain name amitabhbachchan.in.
Under the settlement, each of them undertook not to use the actor's name, image, voice, likeness or any other aspect of his persona without his express permission, an undertaking that binds their heirs and assigns as well.
Nagi said he had taken steps to delete the video-call application, Manoj Publications said it had discontinued the quiz book, the poster seller said it had stopped selling the posters, and Patel said he had deleted the domain in November 2022 and had made no money from it.
Four other defendants never appeared in the proceedings and never filed written statements despite being served with summons. Their right to file a response was closed on 25 September 2023. Against them, the court invoked its powers under Order VIII Rule 10 of the Code of Civil Procedure and decreed the suit, observing that the unauthorised commercial use of Bachchan's identity presented no disputed questions of fact that required a full trial.
The court found that the matter did not need a trial to establish that the defendants had used the actor's very name and photographs for commercial gain without his consent.
The suit covered a wide range of misuses. Beyond the video-call application, the quiz book, the posters and the domain names, the defendants included a person who circulated WhatsApp messages carrying Bachchan's photograph to promote a purported "Kaun Banega Crorepati" lottery, sellers of T-shirts and wall posters carrying his photographs, and the registrants of the domain names amitabhbachchan.com and amitabhbachchan.in, along with the registrars of those domains.
The common thread was the same: the actor's identity was being used to sell products and services, and to attract users, without his knowledge or consent.
One of the most significant features of the order is that it reaches beyond the named defendants. The High Court explicitly extended the permanent decree to unknown entities and anonymous infringers, traditionally catalogued under "John Doe" orders. The court observed that Bachchan's case disclosed a continuing pattern of anonymous misuse of his persona through websites, applications, posters and messaging platforms.
Because such infringers cannot be identified before they act, a decree limited to named individuals would leave the protection full of holes. The court also granted Bachchan the liberty to initiate fresh legal proceedings or to seek direct enforcement of the decree against any new person or entity found exploiting his name, image, voice or persona without authorisation.
The ruling has a history. Bachchan first approached the Delhi High Court in 2022, and on 25 November that year the court passed an interim order protecting his personality rights. That interim protection remained in force while the suit proceeded.
On 9 October 2026, the court said that if Bachchan could not settle the matter with one or more defendants and wanted to pursue the case in court, he must appear in court himself. The final decree now merges the 2022 interim injunction into a permanent order, closing a suit that has run for four years.
The case sits within a growing body of Indian law on personality rights, a field that has developed largely through court decisions rather than a dedicated statute. Indian courts have recognised that a public figure's name, image and voice carry commercial value built over a lifetime of work, and that others cannot appropriate that value for their own profit.
The Delhi High Court has in recent years granted similar protection to other public figures whose identities were being misused online, including through fake endorsements, merchandise and artificial intelligence-generated content. What distinguishes Bachchan's case is that it has now produced a final decree rather than stopping at the interim stage, where most personality rights suits in the Delhi High Court tend to end, with interim injunctions and takedown orders.
The order also reflects how the problem has changed with technology. When Bachchan filed the suit in 2022, the misuses were relatively conventional: an application, a book, posters, a domain name. Since then, the tools for imitating a celebrity have multiplied, with voice cloning, face-swapping and AI-generated video making it possible to put a famous person's face and voice into almost any advertisement or message.
A decree that covers unknown future infringers is designed for that world, where the next misuse may come from an account or a website that does not exist yet.
For Bachchan, who has been one of Indian cinema's most recognisable figures for more than five decades, the decree is a formal recognition that his identity is his own to control. For the wider entertainment industry, it is a signal that the courts will protect a performer's persona as a property right, and that settlements acknowledging that right can bring a long-running dispute to an end without a trial.
The message to anyone tempted to trade on a celebrity's name is now written into a permanent order of the Delhi High Court: no one can be Amitabh Bachchan, online or anywhere else, without his permission.
(Reporting based on News18, Bar and Bench and Mathrubhumi.)