The Delhi High Court has directed the removal of a promotional teaser for the movie Kala Hiran: The Battle for Legacy, which depicts actor Salman Khan and refers to his pending 1998 blackbuck poaching case.
Granting a 24-hour deadline for the removal of online links containing the video, Justice Jyoti Singh observed that the available content was causing ongoing harm to the actor’s public standing. The court emphasized the necessity of protecting personal reputation, noting that it takes significant effort to establish and cannot be recovered once lost. If the links are not taken down within the specified timeframe, digital platforms displaying the teaser will be formally directed to remove the content.
The ruling was confirmed in a statement issued by DSK Legal, the law firm representing Khan. Senior Counsel Ravi Prakash, along with advocates Nizamuddin Pasha, Sidharth Kaushik, Astu Khandelwal, and Charu Sharma, represented the actor, alongside advocates Parag Khandhar, Chandrima Mitra, Krishan Kumar, Tapan Radkar, and Zara Dhanbhoora.
Personality Rights Lawsuit
The direction comes as part of a larger legal action initiated by Khan in December 2025, when he filed a suit in the Delhi High Court seeking a permanent injunction to prevent the unauthorized commercial or personal exploitation of his personality and public rights.
In that petition, Khan cited instances where his name, photos, and movie stills were morphed or manipulated using artificial intelligence to create unauthorized video clips, images, and audio files. The actor asserted that these activities violated his personality rights, trademarks, and copyrights, while posing a risk of misleading his fans and commercial partners. To substantiate the claims, the lawsuit included screenshots of various infringing memes, GIFs, and video content.
Background on the 1998 Poaching Case
The underlying legal controversy dates back to 1998 during the filming of Hum Saath Saath Hain in Jodhpur, Rajasthan, where members of the Bishnoi community filed a complaint alleging that Khan and several other celebrities had killed endangered blackbucks.
Khan was arrested in 1998 before being released on bail. In 2018, two decades after the initial incident, a trial court convicted Khan and sentenced him to five years in prison, after which he obtained bail from a Sessions Court. The Rajasthan High Court subsequently allowed a transfer petition regarding the case in 2022.
