Delhi High Court Gag on AI+ Reviews Faces a Notice Fight

The Delhi High Court barred TechWiser and TechBar from criticizing AI+ Smartphones on April 28, 2026, without hearing either channel. Justice Tushar Rao Gedela issued the ex-parte ad-interim injunction in CS(COMM) 429/2026 after reading video transcripts, not the phones.

On May 20 he ordered founder Madhav Sheth to appear in person. TechWiser’s lawyers said the company listed a fictitious email for host Pratik Rai even though it already had the channel’s real address. The court refused to lift the gag that day. The suit is listed again on October 5, 2026.

The Gag Landed Before the Channels Could Speak

NxtQuantum Shift Technologies India Private Limited, trading as AI+ Smartphones, sued with Sheth as the second plaintiff. The company, CIN U27103MH2024PTC435713, told the court it launched on July 8, 2025 with the Pulse 4G and Nova 5G, built at United Telelinks’ Noida plant, running NxtQuantum OS, with user data on MeitY-approved Google Cloud servers in India. Sheth, who co-founded Realme in 2018 and left in June 2023, is described in the order as founder and CEO.

Defendant no. 2 is TechWiser, founded by Mrinal Saha, with Pratik Rai on camera and 2.52 million subscribers. Defendant no. 3 is TechBar, run by Sanchit Shokeen, with 5.72 million subscribers. Defendant no. 1 is John Doe. The suit also names YouTube. Nobody appeared for the defence on April 28. The court waived pre-institution mediation under Section 12A of the Commercial Courts Act, citing the Supreme Court’s ruling in Yamini Manohar v. T.K.D. Keerthi, and granted an exemption from advance service of the papers so the videos would not disappear first.

The injunction application, I.A. 11318/2026, asked for an Order XXXIX Rules 1 and 2 restraint. Gedela held that the transcripts “border on disparagement,” that consumers who believed them would be discouraged from buying, and that money would not fix the harm.

This untested and unverified analysis has the potential of causing financial loss to the plaintiffs. The essential elements required for the Court to prima facie find disparagement appear to be fulfilled.

Justice Tushar Rao Gedela, Delhi High Court, April 28, 2026 order in CS(COMM) 429/2026

John Doe, TechWiser, and TechBar were restrained from spreading information amounting to disparagement of the company or Sheth on YouTube or any other social or digital platform. Replies were due within four weeks of service. Order XXXIX Rule 3 compliance was due in ten days. The Joint Registrar was listed for August 3, 2026. The court date remains October 5.

A Fictitious Email and a Skipped Notice

Twenty-two days later, Rai was in court seeking vacation of that order. His counsel said the memo of parties used a “completely fictitious” email for him, and put the anchor’s name on the suit, so that nobody would show up on day one. The same company, counsel said, had sent a takedown notice to TechWiser’s correct official email in April and had invited the channel to launches and reviews in March on that address.

Please have your client the day after tomorrow for answer… this kind of a thing, we are not going to permit. Let nobody be under this impression that they can pull the wool over our eyes. We are going to dispel this notion.

Justice Tushar Rao Gedela, Delhi High Court, May 20, 2026 hearing

Gedela also told plaintiff’s counsel that the company could not claim ignorance of the John Does while it already knew the correct ID, “because his takedown notice was sent to the correct id.” Rai’s side called the case a SLAPP, a suit meant to shut down talk around a product launch. They asked for the injunction to come off at once. The judge declined until the plaintiff was heard: “Not unless we see the entire thing… if we have to suspend, then we will have to hear them.” The court is also considering whether TechWiser Media should replace Rai personally as a defendant.

WHAT WE KNOW

• The order: The April 28 restraint was granted with no defence lawyer in the room, after the court also excused advance service of the papers.
• The email fight: On May 20, counsel told the court the suit listed a fictitious address for Pratik Rai, and that AI+ had used TechWiser’s real email for a takedown notice and for event invites.
• The judge’s direction: Gedela ordered Sheth to appear in person and refused to vacate the gag that day.
• The next listing: The commercial suit remains listed before the court on October 5, 2026.

WHAT IS UNCONFIRMED

• The May 22 appearance: The judge asked for Sheth “the day after tomorrow.” No public order from that date has been produced showing what he said, or whether he came.
• Any later modification: No later public order has been produced that lifts, narrows, or continues the April 28 restraint in new terms.
• Retail software: The court did not test a shop-bought phone, so the ADB findings remain a dispute of fact, not a finding.

The notice fight is the part the April 28 papers never had to survive. An ex-parte gag is supposed to be rare because it shuts speech before the speaker is heard. If the plaintiff also files a bad address, the rarity becomes a method.

What the ADB Tests Showed

The plaint attacked two April videos. TechWiser posted “This Indian Phone Is A Marketing Disaster!” on April 9, 2026. The order records 259,454 views. TechBar posted “FAKE Indian Company – Needs to STOP” on April 14, with 332,950 views. That is a 19-day gap from the first video to the gag, and 14 days from the second.

THE TWO VIDEOS IN THE PLAINT

Rai’s hands-on work, as described in the papers around the suit, was not a street interview. He connected an AI+ Pulse 2 to a laptop and ran ADB, Android Debug Bridge, which shows software that a normal app drawer hides. Counsel put the public-interest point in one line on May 20: people were buying on a promise that data was safe, “but our analysis, our review shows that there are actually hidden Chinese apps where everything is going out.”

WHAT TECHWISER PUT ON THE RECORD

• Hidden apps: ADB showed two Chinese apps from Shanghai-based ProCom Technologies, whose terms say it collects a user’s name, profile picture, and phone number. The apps did not sit in the regular drawer. Channel Gyantherapy had flagged similar software earlier, and AI+ had said it was removed.
• The dashboard gap: The privacy screen that AI+ markets as a live map of data access did not show Google app activity. Maps and Gboard used location and the microphone without appearing there.
• The policy text: The brand’s own policy says it may share personal information with affiliates and other third parties, including credit bureaus, for loans, insurance, deferred payment, and pay-later products.

TechBar’s transcript, as filed, said the AI+ Nova Flip shared battery, processor, and camera specs with the Chinese Nubia Flip 2, and that AI+ wearables matched products from a Chinese firm whose logo looked nearly identical. TechWiser also walked through Sheth’s earlier run at HTech India, Honor’s India unit, and at Nexel India, which holds Alcatel rights. Those career points were not independently tested in the order.

Gedela’s April 28 reading of the same transcripts went the other way. He said the clips started as assessments that claimed a technical basis, then did not show that basis. He found “no data or any real technical examination or evaluation by any credible agency,” and said the evaluation also leaned on Sheth’s background. ADB, in that frame, was not a test. It was an unverified opinion with a subscriber count attached.

San Nutrition Set a Higher Bar Last Year

The April 28 order does not invent a new test. It quotes the Delhi High Court’s own 2025 decision in San Nutrition Private Limited v. Arpit Mangal, reported as 2025 SCC OnLine Del 2701. That judgment, by Justice Amit Bansal, restates the disparagement ingredients from Dabur India v. Colortek Meghalaya: the statement is untrue or misleading, it is made maliciously, and it causes special damage. Unlike defamation, the plaintiff has to prove the words are false. A statement made in a genuine belief that it is true undercuts malice.

San Nutrition wanted an interim ban on influencers who had criticised a protein powder using independent lab reports. Bansal refused. He held that the truth and fair comment defences were not palpably false and were not bound to fail at trial. The videos were critiques, not ads. Satire and sharp language did not, on their own, prove ill will. The public interest in what was in the tub outweighed a temporary gag.

Gedela cites that framework and then, at the prima facie stage, treats the TechWiser and TechBar transcripts as if the missing “credible agency” fills the falsehood box. The San Nutrition influencers walked in with lab paper. Rai walked in with ADB logs and the brand’s own policy. One set of reviews survived day one. The other set was frozen before the reviewers were in the building. That is the split that now sits over every Indian phone review that relies on developer tools instead of a paid lab.

Unnamed Reviewers Are Bound Without a Hearing

The operative line does not stop at two URLs. Defendant no. 1, John Doe, is bound with the named channels. Anyone who posts “similar” criticism of AI+ Smartphones can be pulled into the same restraint without prior notice. Indian courts first built that Ashok Kumar device for copyright pirates who hid behind fake names. Moving it into a product-review fight means the order covers speech that has not been written yet, by people the plaintiff says it cannot name, in a case where it could name TechWiser in detail, including subscriber counts.

Apar Gupta, founding director of the Internet Freedom Foundation, has said John Doe clauses were built for genuinely unidentifiable infringers, and that their use in defamation “structurally incentivise over-removal of online criticism, with the user whose speech is taken down having the least effective remedy of any party in the system.” On the Motorola papers he added that the chill starts before a creator is named, because platforms faced with a John Doe takedown usually comply rather than litigate.

That Motorola case is the other half of the April pattern. On April 8, 2026, Additional City Civil and Sessions Judge Vedamoorthy BS in Bengaluru granted Motorola Mobility India an ex-parte temporary injunction against 17 named YouTube channels, a John Doe, and platforms including X, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, Threads, and Meta. The plaint listed about 360 URLs. The April order listed a further hearing for June 2, 2026. Motorola said it was acting over false claims that phones exploded or caught fire. Creators said durability tests and harsh reviews were swept up with the abuse.

THE APRIL GAG CALENDAR

1. April 8, 2026: Bengaluru civil court grants Motorola an ex-parte restraint covering 17 YouTube channels, platforms, and a John Doe.
2. April 9, 2026: TechWiser posts its Pulse 2 video.
3. April 14, 2026: TechBar posts its video on the company.
4. April 28, 2026: Delhi High Court grants AI+ the TechWiser and TechBar gag, with John Doe included, and lists the court date for October 5.
5. May 7, 2026: TechWiser says the AI+ video is no longer live and that the dispute is in the High Court.
6. May 20, 2026: Gedela orders Sheth to appear over the email allegation and leaves the injunction in place.

Naming a platform at the start of a private disparagement suit has a second effect. Under the Supreme Court’s ruling in Shreya Singhal v. Union of India, Section 79 of the IT Act gives hosts a safe harbour for user speech until a court order or a government notice arrives. A day-one injunction is that order. MeitY’s draft IT Amendment Rules, 2026, would go further by tying the same harbour to compliance with government advisories. The AI+ papers are a private brand using the court door that those rules would widen for the state.

NxtQuantum OS v1.1 Arrives Under the Same Gag

AI+ told the press there is “a clear distinction between fair criticism and deliberate defamation,” that the videos “lacked any credible technical basis or independent verification,” and that it does not seek to “silence legitimate reviewers or suppress honest feedback.” The April 28 order is the tool it used. The May 7 channel post is what that tool did on YouTube.

It might have come to your attention that a recent Ai+ video is no longer live on the channel.

We are currently dealing with a legal discourse prompting this action. While we cannot discuss or reveal the specifics of the case as the same is sub-judice before the Hon’ble High… pic.twitter.com/Ps1yQShbnO

— Techwiser (@TechWiser) May 7, 2026

TechWiser said it could not discuss a matter that was sub-judice, then said the larger stake was “trust in YouTube review(s),” and that a company should not be allowed to silence a good-faith critique “by presenting a convenient, self-serving and inaccurate set of facts.” Saha told fellow creators the same day that if critical analysis is treated as a legal threat rather than a feedback loop, independent tech reviews in India are at risk. Rai, answering supporters, said he believed “all the old reviews by other Youtubers are down.” That is the John Doe design working as intended: the named videos go first, and nearby criticism gets cautious or disappears.

The brand did not pause the sovereignty pitch while those videos were dark. Its public NxtQuantum OS does not collect advertising data line sits on the OS site as a core claim. Store-side copy is broader. Readers can check how the company says it shares data against the credit-bureau language the TechWiser video put on screen. In early September, AI+ said NxtQuantum OS v1.1 had begun to roll out, with a NxtPrivacy Dashboard that groups app permissions and a claim that app traffic stays on India-hosted infrastructure, except for Google services in California and Singapore. That is the same dashboard category Rai said had already missed Maps and Gboard. The people who filmed that miss are the people who cannot film the sequel.

October 5 Will Be the First Full Argument

Defendants can still ask the same court to vacate or modify an ex-parte injunction under Order XXXIX Rule 4 of the Code of Civil Procedure, 1908, on the grounds that they were not heard or that the balance of convenience was misapplied. Rai has already filed that kind of application. On May 20 it did not move, because the judge wanted the plaintiff’s answer first, including from Sheth in person.

October 5, 2026 is the date on the April 28 order for a court hearing, months after a gag that issued on transcripts alone. The phones were never on the bench. The ADB session was labelled unverified because no “credible agency” signed it. The San Nutrition influencers, a year earlier to the day, kept their videos because they had lab paper and a defence that was not doomed on its face. AI+ still sells a Made-in-India privacy story. TechWiser and TechBar are still the named proof that a phone review in India can be frozen before the reviewer is served at an address the brand already knows.

Disclaimer: This article is news reporting and analysis of public court orders, hearing accounts, company statements, and product claims. It is informational only and is not legal advice, a prediction of how CS(COMM) 429/2026 will be decided, or a direction to any party on whether to speak, take down, or restore content. Readers who are named in an injunction, or who are deciding whether to publish similar material, should consult a qualified advocate admitted to practise in the relevant Indian court before acting. Figures, listings, and case status in this piece reflect the orders and statements described above and may change at the next hearing or by a later modification under Order XXXIX Rule 4.