The suit was premised on the fact that the Suit Videos infringed her privacy, resulted in a loss of her reputation and were of great prejudice to her career. The plaintiff applied anonymously to the Court seeking interim protection against the publication, streaming or other broadcasting of the Suit Videos, through a complete take down of the Suit Videos. As a result of these Suit Videos circulating on the internet, the plaintiff had to face constant harassment by anonymous callers.
Some of the Suit Videos were also edited to add obscene, objectionable and pornographic commentary. 1-36 in the suit) uploaded the Suit Videos on different websites, some of which hosted pornographic content. Nevertheless, despite removal of the content by the producer and without the plaintiff’s consent, a handful other people (listed as Defendant Nos. She immediately reached out to the producer, requesting him to remove the videos, and he soon complied. In December 2020, the plaintiff discovered that the producer had uploaded the Suit Videos to his YouTube channel and website. The project was later shelved, meaning the series was never produced. On this basis, she participated in the creation of the web series’ demonstration video/trailer – which included explicit scenes of complete, frontal nudity (Suit Videos). She was approached by a renowned Indian film producer, Ram Gopal Verma Studios, to film a web series and was promised the lead role. The plaintiff is a well-known actor in the Indian television and film industry, specifically in Bengali films. This was especially so following the clear and immediate effect on, and irreparable harm to, her personal and professional life, when the videos depicting her in a sexual nature had been circulated against her will. Although the Court was conscious that there is no statutory right to be forgotten, it ultimately held that the actor’s right to privacy deserved protection. While the actor may have consented to the shooting, the Court found her consent to have since been expressly withdrawn, as the producer of the series had also removed the videos upon her request. While the producer of the videos took down his footage soon after the actor complained, the defendants did not – which the actor argued was in breach of her right to be forgotten and, more broadly, her right to privacy. The actor sued the defendants after they failed to remove multiple explicit clips of her, which were originally filmed for the purposes of a potential lead role in a web series.
On 23 August 2021, the High Court of Delhi upheld an actor’s right to privacy under Article 21 of the Indian Constitution and directed internet intermediaries as well as websites to take down the explicit videos of the actor which had been uploaded on to multiple video-sharing platforms without her consent.
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