Actor Suniel Shetty has approached the Bombay High Court seeking protection of his personality rights after discovering that several social media pages and websites were using his photographs for commercial purposes without his consent.
A single-judge bench of Justice Arif Doctor briefly heard the interim application on Friday and reserved its order. Senior advocate Birendra Saraf appeared for Shetty.
In his plea, Shetty has requested the court to direct all such websites to immediately take down his photographs and to restrain them from using his images in the future without authorisation.
Saraf informed the court that certain websites had even circulated fake images of Shetty with his grandchild. The plea alleged that the actor’s photos were being commercially exploited in ways that suggested associations that did not exist.
According to the application, a real estate agency’s website and a gambling site had displayed Shetty’s photographs to promote their business, despite him having no connection with these entities.
Saraf argued that the unauthorised use of Shetty’s personality and likeness was damaging to his reputation and violated his legal rights.
After briefly hearing the submissions, Justice Doctor reserved the order on the actor’s plea.
