Cockroach Janta Party leaders Saurav Das and Ashutosh Ranka told the Delhi High Court they would take down their posts against senior advocate Gaurav Bhatia within 24 hours, as the Court issued summons in his defamation suit and directed X to place on record the subscriber details of the accounts.
New Delhi: Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) leaders Saurav Das and Ashutosh Ranka told the Delhi High Court on Thursday that they would delete their social media posts against BJP leader and senior advocate Gaurav Bhatia within 24 hours, with the Court recording their undertaking, issuing summons in Bhatia’s defamation suit, and directing X to furnish the Basic Subscriber Information of the accounts within three weeks [Gaurav Bhatia v. Saurav Das and Others].
The development came before Justice Tushar Rao Gedela when the matter resumed after a passover, earlier in the day the Court had orally suggested that Das and Ranka take instructions on removing the posts on their own rather than face a takedown order. The allegations on both sides remain untested at this stage, and no finding on the merits has been recorded.
The undertaking to take down the posts
When the matter was taken up again, counsel for Das submitted that he would take down the tweets against the senior advocate. Counsel for Ranka told the Court that the tweet in question had already been removed, and that a reposted tweet would also be taken down the same day. The Court recorded that the posts would be removed within 24 hours after the defendants’ counsel undertook to do so.
The suit concerns a post published on X on September 5, in the aftermath of the arrest of one Swatantra Bhardwaj, who is accused of assaulting a teenage CJP protester. According to Bhatia, the post was an AI-generated tweet that falsely attributed to him remarks he says he never made, presented alongside his photograph. LawChakra is not reproducing the specific words the post is said to have falsely put in his mouth, since the very basis of the suit is that he did not utter them.
Bhatia presses for damages and a dynamic injunction
Although the defendants agreed to remove the posts, Bhatia pressed the Court to go further. When the Court asked whether the parties could be sent to mediation to resolve the dispute, Bhatia said he wished to press for damages. When the Court observed that the defendants were already taking down the impugned tweets, Bhatia contended that even after the day’s hearing, further tweets had been made.
Bhatia pressed for a dynamic injunction, describing this as a graver case because, on his submission, the defendants were “putting fake picture” connecting his name to a person who had been arrested, and urged that the social media intermediaries be directed to at least delete that image. He submitted that in a single day, more than a million people had viewed the tweet. The Court, however, pointed him first to the remedies available with the platforms themselves, asking, “Have you approached them (Meta)? There are Rules provided. If they don’t do it, then come back.”
The intermediaries’ position
Counsel for Meta submitted that the plaint contained a single URL, which was a newspaper report on the incident, and that the platform could not proactively censor content, a submission that reflects the settled position under the intermediary-liability framework, which protects platforms from a general obligation to pre-screen user content and requires them to act on specific, identified material rather than to police speech at large. The Court observed that the defendants would have to file a reply, after which it could consider the matter further.
The exchanges again grew pointed. When the Court remarked that the defendants had said they would take down the posts and asked why Bhatia was not reposing faith in that assurance, saying “We have told them. They have said they will take down. What else? Why would they post is the question. You can come back. Why are you not having faith?”, Bhatia responded that he had full faith in the Court. The Court further observed, “Lot of people say lot of things about courts also. We take it. You may have different reasons.” Bhatia, for his part, described Das as a “habitual offender” who, he alleged, had not spared even the judiciary, a characterisation advanced by the plaintiff and not a finding of the Court.
Summons, subscriber details, and liberty to return
The Court issued summons in the suit to Das, Ranka, Abhijit Dipke and the CJP, and directed X to place on record the Basic Subscriber Information of the accounts within three weeks. On the position of Dipke and the CJP, their counsel submitted that there was nothing stated against them in the suit, a submission Bhatia objected to; the Court asked them to file their responses.
Rather than pass a broad, standing injunction, the Court framed a targeted mechanism for any recurrence. In its order it recorded:
“Plaintiff is permitted to approach X and Meta in case similar or identical posts or tweets appear. Platforms may consider the same and take appropriate action. In case there is impediment, both platforms are at liberty to tell Plaintiff who may take appropriate steps.”
Why the order matters
The hearing is a useful illustration of how courts are calibrating relief in the era of synthetic and rapidly-viral content, where the harm can spread to a million viewers in a day before any order issues. Faced with a plaintiff seeking a sweeping dynamic injunction and a defendant already agreeing to take the material down, the Court chose a middle course: it secured a time-bound removal by undertaking, ordered disclosure of the accounts’ subscriber details so that responsibility could be traced, and gave the plaintiff a defined route to the platforms should identical content resurface, rather than imposing a broad pre-emptive gag or an obligation on intermediaries to monitor speech at large.
That approach keeps intact the settled architecture of intermediary liability, where platforms respond to specific, identified content rather than proactively censor, while still giving a defamed party a workable remedy against repetition. The direction to X to produce Basic Subscriber Information is significant in its own right: it reflects the increasing willingness of courts to lift the anonymity of accounts alleged to have circulated fabricated content, a necessary step where the wrong lies in a false attribution of speech that the person never made. With summons issued and replies awaited, the suit, and Bhatia’s claim for damages, now proceeds to a fuller hearing; nothing has yet been decided on the merits.
Case Title: Gaurav Bhatia v. Saurav Das and Others
Bench: Justice Tushar Rao Gedela, Delhi High Court
Date of Hearing: September 10, 2026