The Delhi Court has provided relief to Harsh Beniwal(Plaintiff 1) who was aggrieved by a video which was live streamed by Ajaz Khan (Defendant 1) in which there were sexually explicit remarks against the Plaintiff, his mother(Plaintiff 2) and the sister.

The Single Judge Bench of Justice Vikas Mahajan while hearing the plea of the renowned Youtuber,Comedian and Actor observed that “It is trite law that an individual’s reputation is an integral part of his/her personality and cannot be unjustly tarnished under the guise of freedom of speech. It is equally trite law that dignity and honour of an individual cannot be allowed to be defamed on the ground of right of free speech and expression.”

In this case, the plaintiff (1) contended that on 16th September,2024, he made a parody video, where he himself was the lead and the said video was intended as a funny roast video bearing resemblance with the Defendant, solely for the purpose of entertainment.The said video was duly accompanied with a disclaimer that it was purely a work of fiction and any resemblance to person living/dead was purely coincidental.

It was submitted that after posting the parody video, defendant no.1 released a reaction to the parody video (‘impugned video’) through his official ‘X’ account wherein he made sexually explicit comments targeting Harsh Beniwal (Plaintiff 1), as well as his mother and sister.When the impugned video was released, it gathered a lot of public attention, and it instantly became viral all over the internet. The plaintiffs submitted that though the video became unavailable after 24 hours, the same was still in circulation on different social media platforms as people who had watched the live streaming of the impugned video had recorded and circulated the same.

The court on perusal of the impugned video,deemed the utterances made by Defendant as extremely offensive, sexually explicit, foul and filthy, which per se shocks the conscience of the court.

Thus,the Court after due consideration stated that, “prima facie, plaintiffs had made out the case for grant of ad interim relief. Further, the Court was satisfied that the grave and irreparable loss and injury would be caused to the plaintiffs, if ad interim injunctive orders were not passed in their favour. The balance of convenience also lay in favour of the plaintiffs.”

In the order the court gave directives to be issued to third-party uploaders of the video to remove the specified URLs and further added that, if such instructions were not adhered to, platforms like YouTube could then be directed to remove, delete, or block the identified URLs. Given that the plaintiffs were unaware of the identities of those who recorded and circulated the contentious video across social media platforms, and considering the nature of the remarks made in the video, the Court deemed it appropriate to instruct YouTube, Instagram, and X Corp (Defendants 2, 3, and 4, respectively) to take steps to remove, delete, or block the impugned URLs from their platforms.

The matter is listed for further hearing on 21 March, 2025.

Case Title: Harsh Beniwal v. Ajaz Khan, CS(OS) 917 of 2024.

Advocates For the Plaintiffs: Mr.Ankit Gupta, Mr.Mithil Malhotra and Mr. Anmol Gupta.

Advocates For the Defendants: Mr.Rohan Ahuja, Ms.Shrutttima and Ms.Aishwarya Debadarshini