The Delhi High Court on Friday sought responses from the makers of Doosra to Sourav Ganguly's plea that the film infringes his personality rights, and ordered a private screening before considering interim relief. A vacation bench of Justice Vinod Kumar issued summons to the film's producers, director, and distributor after Ganguly and Luv Films LLP moved the court, LiveMint reported.
Justice Kumar heard the case during the Dussehra vacation. The film released on 23 October, a day after the high court declined to halt the theatrical release, according to India Today. The next hearing is set for 29 October, when the question of interim relief returns.
What the two sides argue
Ganguly filed the petition ahead of release, alleging that the movie uses references tied to his identity and cricketing career in ways that infringe his personality and commercial rights. The plea points to the 2002 NatWest Series final against England, where Ganguly captained India to a dramatic chase and then celebrated shirtless on the Lord's balcony, a moment that remains part of Indian cricket's visual memory. His lawyer told the court the former captain had not licensed the production.
The film's senior counsel offered a different account. The work is not a biopic, he said, but a fictional story about a middle-class girl from Rajasthan whose life intersects with certain sporting events involving the cricketer. The makers also said they had obtained permission from relevant rights holders for clips featuring Ganguly, a claim that raises the question of what exactly has been used and under whose authorisation.
The permission defence rests on a distinction the court may need to clarify. Clips licensed from broadcasters or sports bodies typically cover news, highlights, or archival material. They do not automatically grant the right to weave a player's likeness into a fictional character arc. If the makers cite such licences, the court will likely ask what those agreements actually permit and whether the athlete himself needed to consent separately.
A screening as evidence
Justice Kumar stated the next step clearly. According to PTI, he said:
(The defendants to make) arrangements for playing the film so that it can be decided whether the personality rights of the plaintiff are violated or not.
This is not routine in commercial disputes. The court wants to watch the film itself rather than rely on trailers, posters, or competing descriptions. The timing remains contested. The defendants' lawyer argued that interim relief was too late because the film had already released; Ganguly's counsel argued the court could still order a stay. That disagreement will surface again on 29 October.
A post-release injunction would be extraordinary. It would pull a film from theatres or delay its streaming run, with consequences for the distributor's contracts and marketing spend. Courts generally hesitate to unwind commercial releases. But the high court has not ruled this out; it has simply gathered more material before deciding.
Where the case sits in Indian law
Indian law has no single statute on personality rights. Courts have treated the right to control one's image, name, voice, and gestures as an extension of the constitutional right to privacy, and they have protected it through common law remedies that resemble passing off and unfair competition. Because the legal foundation is judicial rather than statutory, each dispute becomes a precedent-setting exercise. The Ganguly case is being watched by IP lawyers for how far a court will go when the challenged work is fiction rather than documentary or a direct product endorsement.
The Delhi High Court has, in recent years, issued interim orders that shield actors' names, voices, likenesses, and catchphrases from unauthorised commercial use. Those cases generally involved direct exploitation: a voice in an advertisement, a name used to sell a product, a deepfake or parody video. The Ganguly dispute is different. A film is not a product endorsement. The alleged infringement lies in narrative resemblance to a real person's public moments, and the court's screening order acknowledges that this question cannot be resolved by comparing logos or labels. It requires watching the work.
The added complication is that Ganguly is both the subject of a coming biopic and the alleged template for a rival's fictional arc. Luv Films LLP, which is producing the authorised biopic, joined him as plaintiff. If the court finds that Doosra borrows enough of the cricketer's recognisable story beats or visual moments, it could expand personality rights into narrative territory that has generally been considered safer for screenwriters. That would shift risk calculations for studios and streaming platforms commissioning semi-fictional work around real public figures.
What the next hearing may decide
Indian courts have avoided broad rules, preferring interim balancing that protects a celebrity in one case and allows a satirical or artistic work in another. That approach works for established stars with deep legal budgets; it is less predictable for independent filmmakers, digital creators, and smaller platforms. A decision requiring producers to screen films for personality-rights compliance before release would impose a new and expensive gatekeeping layer. A decision confining the remedy to damages after release would leave celebrities chasing post-hoc compensation. Neither outcome is clean.
The 29 October hearing will be the first substantive exchange on whether a post-release injunction remains available, and whether the court will treat the film's fictional framing as a defence or merely a characterisation. The court has not ruled on merits. What it has done is signal that the work itself, not the marketing around it, will be central to the inquiry.
For Indian readers, the case shows how the country's courts are constructing personality rights without a statute. The 29 October hearing will not end that construction. It may, however, establish whether a fiction inspired by a real cricketer's most famous celebration requires the cricketer's permission.
