New Delhi: When a Delhi trial court handed Adani Enterprises a sweeping John Doe gag order this September, it was the latest in a growing series of injunctions that have morphed from piracy shields into powerful censorship tools. These orders were designed for cases where the wrongdoers were unknown. Today, they are being used to silence reporting on companies, block thousands of links, and keep inconvenient reports out of public view.
A John Doe order is a court injunction that applies not just to named defendants but also to unknown parties who might later be found committing the alleged violation. In India, these injunctions are also known as ‘Ashok Kumar’ orders, after a common Hindi film actor used by courts as a stand-in for anonymous wrongdoers.
Originally crafted to tackle copyright piracy, where film producers could not identify every infringing website or distributor, the order has since spread to cases involving trademarks, counterfeit goods and personality rights. But now it has become a potent censorship tool to injunct the media from reporting in defamation suits.
Its sweeping reach means that anyone, present or future, can be bound by the injunction, often without notice or a chance to defend themselves.
Also Read: Delhi Court quashes gag order in defamation suit by Adani, says journalists should’ve been heard
Adani v. Paranjoy Guha Thakurta & others
On 6 September, the Rohini District Court restrained journalists, publishers, and activists from publishing material deemed “defamatory” for Adani Enterprises Limited (AEL). What made the order remarkable was its dynamic sweep: Adani could forward fresh URLs of any article or post to intermediaries, who had to delete them within 36 hours. The injunction did not identify specific offending statements but blanketed entire categories of reporting.
For journalists, this meant that investigative pieces could vanish overnight without a hearing or judicial scrutiny. Critics described it as a private censorship pipeline handed to one of India’s biggest conglomerates.
On 18 September, the court reserved its order on an appeal filed by Paranjoy Guha Thakurta. In another appeal by journalists Ravi Nair, Abir Dasgupta, Ayaskant Das, and Ayush Joshi, the 6 September order was set aside.
The court found the original injunction “sweeping” and said it had the “effect of decreeing the suit itself without a trial”, amounting to a serious violation of free speech rights.
Dharmasthala ‘mass burials’ case
In July, the Bengaluru City Civil Court passed one of its broadest John Doe injunctions. On a plea by the Dharmasthala temple administration, it ordered the removal of nearly 8,842 links from YouTube, Facebook, and other platforms. These posts and videos questioned the handling of alleged mass burials in the vicinity of the temple town. The court also barred further reporting on temple head Veerendra Heggade, his family, and related institutions.
The gag order effectively froze media coverage. By August, the Karnataka High Court struck down much of it, calling the restrictions excessive.
The Supreme Court later refused to interfere. The case was triggered by a YouTube video that revived memories of the 2012 rape and murder of a girl in Dharmasthala. Like the later mass burial order, the injunction was sweeping and vague—it did not single out specific defamatory content, but instead restrained all critical reporting.
The Bloomberg order
In 2024, a Supreme Court bench led by then Chief Justice D.Y. Chandrachud, with Justices Pardiwala and Manoj Misra, addressed a Delhi High Court order upholding an interim injunction against Bloomberg Television Production India. The order, passed by a Saket court, directed Bloomberg to take down an article critical of Zee Entertainment Enterprises.
The Supreme Court reiterated the three-fold test for interim relief: a prima facie case, balance of convenience, and irreparable harm. It stressed that ex parte injunctions must only be granted where content is demonstrably “malicious” or “palpably false”.
The ruling underscored the exceptional nature of gag orders in defamation suits, especially when they touch upon press freedom.
Also Read: The DNA dilemma: How Indian courts differ on ordering paternity tests in rape cases
Swami Ramdev v. Facebook & Others
In this 2019 case, the Delhi High Court ordered global takedowns of defamatory content targeting Ramdev and Patanjali Ayurveda. The plaintiffs alleged that videos uploaded on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and other platforms repeated allegations earlier restrained in the book Godman to Tycoon: The Untold Story of Baba Ramdev.
While platforms agreed to geo-block content in India, they opposed global removals, citing free speech, jurisdictional conflicts, and the principle of comity of courts.
The court, however, held that the content was defamatory and linked to portions of the book already found to be offensive, making out a prima facie case.
Going further, the high court invoked Section 75 of the IT Act to hold that India’s law could apply extraterritorially where content was uploaded from India.
It concluded that platforms must block the defamatory material globally if uploaded from India, and at least geo-block it for Indian users if uploaded abroad.
The court thus issued one of India’s strongest John Doe-style injunctions, effectively allowing Ramdev to keep flagging URLs for takedowns worldwide.
Sadhguru’s 2025 injunction
In 2025, Delhi High Court passed an injunction in favour of spiritual leader Sadhguru (Isha Foundation) restraining rogue websites and accounts from misusing his name, voice, image or likeness—specifically flagging the risk of AI-generated deepfakes and doctored material.
The court directed platforms to disable identified content and permitted the plaintiffs to notify intermediaries of further abuses, which the platforms were to act on promptly.
The order adopted John Doe-style mechanics to combat emergent AI misuse that could rapidly spread and be hard to attribute.
While the judgment was welcomed by advocates concerned about non-consensual deepfakes and identity misuse, civil liberties commentators warned that similar sweeping tools can be repurposed to stifle legitimate criticism if not tightly circumscribed: The ease of flagging and takedown risks making platforms the first, and sometimes final, arbiters of what content survives online.
The pattern & change in practice
From protecting films to empowering conglomerates, John Doe orders have spread across subject matters and courts. In defamation cases like Adani and Dharmasthala, they have crossed into dangerous territory—curbing speech, blacking out reporting, and chilling journalism. What began as a niche tool against pirated DVDs has evolved into one of the most potent censorship mechanisms in India’s legal system.
Delhi-based IP advocate Ruchika Yadav pointed to the Bloomberg ruling of 2024, which stressed that ex parte injunctions in defamation must remain exceptional. Relief against Ashok Kumar order defendants is routine in intellectual property disputes, but when extended to defamation, it undermines constitutional protections.
Yadav noted that recent trial court orders often fail to apply the three-fold test properly or even explain why ex parte relief is necessary. Worse, in the Adani case, the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting issued takedown notices covering reports on material already in the public domain. She observed that the order’s vagueness meant Adani itself determined what was defamatory—a power that should belong only to the court.
Thus, a tool once meant to fight pirated DVDs has turned into a constitutional flashpoint, one where trial courts, pressed for urgency, risk erasing journalism in the name of protecting reputations.
Constitutional concerns
Senior advocate Sunil Fernandes told ThePrint that John Doe orders in India are almost exclusively sought by powerful actors: “Big businessmen, people who are influential, or those with a great deal of clout. Not by people from the non-privileged section.”
He added that the orders are being misused. “Nowadays, if you are an influential person, you don’t have to prove genuine defamation. You enter court, say this is inconvenient to me, and therefore, (give me) John Doe.” He lamented on the trend in India of using John Doe orders to close down URLs, websites, Facebook pages and YouTube channels that are critical. But originally, a John Doe order was “not meant for that”, he added.
Therefore, the courts have to balance both sides. “They have to see that in the exercise of the freedom of speech and expression—are you crossing that constitutional Lakshman rekha and giving something harmful, defamatory and malicious? So, that test has to be applied,” he said.
From a constitutional perspective, Fernandes called it a “grey area”. Courts must balance freedom of expression against reputation, but the threshold for such orders has been “considerably relaxed”.
(Edited by Viny Mishra)
ThePrint chooses it’s battles very cleverly. Where was the outrage when the Supreme Court watered down the anti-stray dog verdict? It simply didn’t care for two reasons-
1. The Editor/Founder Mr. Shekhar Gupta personally loves stray dogs and has been a long time champion for all kinds of idiotic animal rights.
2. It was very clearly a battle between the elites and the common man. The elites just love stray dogs and indulge them with food and what not.
Unfortunately, for the common man, a stray dog represents a serious threat to the safety and security of his family, especially kids and the elderly. Kids being mauled to death by gangs of strays are a regular occurrence in India.
These elites, including the likes of Mr. Gupta, threw in all their might in the battle to “save” stray dogs. The Supreme Court, as is the norm, bowed before the combined might of the elites of Indian society.
Who lost? The common man – who is eternally worried about his kids safety and security. Who himself gets chased by such dogs every now and then while going to or returning from the office or the market.
The elites won at the cost of the aam aadmi.
But ThePrint showed no outrage. Rather, it was at the forefront of the pro-dog media coverage.
In this case (the one referred to in the article), again the elites (Adani, etc.) won. At whose expense? Of course, the common man (Paranjoy Guha Thakurta, etc.)
But now ThePrint haa decided to go hammer and tongs at the Indian judiciary for protecting the elites.
It’s really a weird world that we live in.