A court in Tamil Nadu has ordered a criminal investigation into books bought for public libraries and suspected of being generated with artificial intelligence. The Madras High Court directed the state’s anti-corruption agency on Tuesday to register a first information report at once and to freeze bank accounts linked to the publisher accused of supplying the books. The order turns a row over AI-generated books into a criminal case about public money.
The bench of Justices GR Swaminathan and MD Sumathi also directed disciplinary action, including suspension, against officials behind the purchases, and removal of the suspect books from shelves. The court observed that despite allegations of a large-scale scam involving public money, the authorities had registered no first information report. “Crores of rupees has gone out of the public exchequer,” the court said. “It is too obvious that a crime of this humongous proportion could not have taken place but for the active involvement of government servants.”
AI-generated books and the Coimbatore library
The controversy centres on Periyar Arivulagam, a library in Coimbatore built at a cost of about 3 billion rupees and named after social reformer Periyar EV Ramasamy. It was inaugurated on 16 October by Tamil Nadu Chief Minister C Joseph Vijay. Tamil novelist Perumal Murugan raised concerns after visiting the library, writing in an online magazine that nearly 1,800 books in its Tamil section came from a little-known publisher, Agal Vilakku Pathippagam. He said the books contained false information and carried doubtful authorship.
One book cited in the row, Naladiyar Vaazhvin Vazhikatti (A Guide to Life through Naladiyar), cost a reported 1,445 rupees for 300 pages. Another, Democracy and People’s Rights in the Contemporary World, was found at the Kalaignar Centenary Library in Madurai and named economist Jean Dreze as its author. Dreze told The Hindu newspaper that he had not written the book. Works falsely attributed to Tamil poet Subramania Bharati were also found. The court recorded both titles among the AI-generated books under scrutiny.
How the AI-generated books were found
The case has raised wider questions about the growing use of AI in publishing and the trade in AI-generated books, where tools can generate entire books quickly and cheaply but also produce false information and invented references. It has not been established whether AI produced any of the disputed books, and that question is now part of the investigation. BBC Tamil visited a Chennai address listed by Agal Vilakku and Phoenix Publishing House, another publisher named in the controversy, but found no signs identifying either business.
School Education Minister A Rajmohan called the allegations potentially “India’s first AI scam”. He said 523 books had already been removed from the Connemara Public Library in Chennai after checks raised concerns about their authenticity and quality. About 2,000 Agal Vilakku books have been removed from Periyar Arivulagam, and The New Indian Express reported more than 3,000 suspected AI-generated books at the library. The state government has ordered an internal audit of library collections across Tamil Nadu.
What the court ordered on AI-generated books
The order came in a contempt petition alleging non-compliance with directions the High Court issued in June 2024 on transparency in library book procurement. The court recorded that the state government had acknowledged serious irregularities in the purchase of AI-generated books and other suspect titles. Jayanthi, an Indian Administrative Service officer, was relieved as Director of Public Libraries, the Directorate of Vigilance and Anti-Corruption began an enquiry, and existing procurement orders were cancelled. The bench asked why no criminal case had been registered. The state public prosecutor did not dispute that a crime had been committed.
The bench held that the AI-generated books and plagiarised titles could fall within “doubtful taste” under the Tamil Nadu Public Libraries Rules, 1950, and that books with dubious content or false narratives should not be procured. It observed that by stacking bogus books with false content and books by phantom authors, the state breached its duty under the Tamil Nadu Public Libraries Act, 1948, and infringed the public’s right to accurate information under Article 19(1)(a) of the Constitution.
The political row over the purchases
The row over AI-generated books has become political. The state government, led by the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, blamed the previous Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam administration for ordering the books. Rajmohan showed a purchase order issued on 14 February 2026, while the DMK was in power, and said the state would seek to recover public money if wrongdoing was found. The DMK rejected the allegations as politically motivated and called for an investigation into the purchases. More than 160 writers, researchers, artists and publishers signed a joint statement calling for an independent inquiry, the release of procurement data and an audit of library collections. The matter will be heard on 11 November.