DEEPFAKE CRIMES AND CRIMINAL JUSTICE: EVALUATING INDIA'S LEGAL RESPONSE UNDER THE BHARATIYA NYAYA SANHITA, 2023
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.67874/ijlcs.62Keywords:
Deepfakes, Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023, Synthetic Media, Personality Rights, Digital Criminal JusticeAbstract
The criminalisation of synthetic media in India has not been a planned phenomenon; it is the result of a nineteenth-century categorisation of media that was designed to address nineteenth-century harms. This article makes a doctrinal analysis of the current legal response to deepfake crimes under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023 ("BNS"), read together with the Information Technology Act, 2000, the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 and the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Amendment Rules, 2026. It argues that the BNS was drafted in the very period in which generative AI was mainstreamed in India, yet was formulated without any awareness of this new category of synthetic media, and hence merely re-numbers rather than resolves the interpretive tension that the Indian Penal Code, 1860 had already shown when confronted with morphed images and voice cloning. The article examines the constitutional underpinnings in Articles 19 and 21, the developing personality and publicity-rights jurisprudence of the Delhi High Court, and a comparative study of the European Union's Artificial Intelligence Act and the United States' TAKE IT DOWN Act, to show how India's personation, forgery, defamation and voyeurism provisions together create a disjointed, victim-unfriendly, and largely civil rather than criminal enforcement pathway.
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Copyright (c) 2026 Kimika Bhardwaj, Dr. Shruti Goyal (Author)
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