Acquitted in 2019, woman gets Karnataka High Court order to mask name online

“A Court of law may pronounce innocence in its judgment, but if the virtual world continues to portray the individual as an accused, the acquittal risks becoming a paper declaration, bereft of any meaningful consequence in the lived realities of the individual,” the court said on July 27. It said allowing old digital records to keep reviving allegations settled by an acquittal would amount to “allowing technology to defeat justice and memory to triumph over judicial truth”.

The matter arose from a case registered in Bengaluru in which the petitioner was arrayed as accused number 3 and faced charges under the Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act, the Foreigners Act, the Information Technology Act and the Indian Penal Code (IPC). After a chargesheet was filed, the case was tried and on March 28, 2019, the petitioner and the other accused were acquitted.

Name continued to appear online

The woman approached the high court after finding that her name continued to appear on commonly accessed search platforms, including Google, and on Indian Kanoon in connection with the criminal proceedings. Despite the final outcome of the case, digital records continued to identify her as accused number 3.

Justice M Nagaprasanna also noted that the right to be forgotten is not an unrestricted right to erase history and must be balanced.

According to the order, the woman subsequently moved to Sweden. She had approached the United Nations seeking refugee recognition, her application was accepted and she was granted refugee status and permanent residence in Sweden, where she settled down in Stockholm.

She told the court that the continued online association with the criminal case was affecting her professional prospects. The order records her contention that prospective employers conducting background searches could encounter references to the criminal proceedings. Her counsel argued that the continued digital presence of the case affected not only employment prospects but also her ability to live with dignity.

The Karnataka High Court Registrar General and the City Civil Court Registrar opposed the plea, arguing that allowing such masking could open the “flood gates” and lead to similar claims from other litigants. They also contended that granting such relief would “open a Pandora’s box”, with many similarly placed persons seeking identical directions.

Right to be forgotten

Justice Nagaprasanna noted that the trial court had acquitted the petitioner because the prosecution had failed to establish the guilt of the accused beyond reasonable doubt. The high court stressed that the acquittal had attained finality.

The court said a final acquittal should have meaningful consequences beyond the courtroom. If the virtual world continued to portray an acquitted person as an accused, the judicial outcome could lose its practical significance, it observed.

The judgment examined the “right to oblivion” and “right to be forgotten” as a part of informational privacy. Justice Nagaprasanna referred to the Supreme Court’s Constitution Bench judgment in K S Puttaswamy (Retd) v Union of India, which recognised informational privacy and an individual’s interest in controlling personal data and his or her existence on the internet.

The high court referred to the Supreme Court’s observation that “Humans forget, but the internet does not forget and does not let humans forget.” It also noted that the right to be forgotten is not an unrestricted right to erase history and must be balanced against interests, including freedom of expression. “…this right, as a part of the larger right to privacy, has to be balanced against other fundamental rights like the freedom of expression, or freedom of media, fundamental to a democratic society,” it said.

‘Pandora’s box’ argument rejected

Rejecting the argument that granting the woman’s plea could encourage similar petitions and “open a Pandora’s box”, the high court said constitutional rights cannot be denied just because others may seek the same relief.

“Courts do not adjudicate rights by counting the number of those who may seek justice in the future,” Justice Nagaprasanna said. “They adjudicate them by testing the legitimacy of the claim against the touchstone of the Constitution,” he added.

The court further held that the right to dignity under Article 21 includes protection against unwarranted stigma, perpetual suspicion and needless humiliation. Once an acquittal has attained finality, the court said, digital records should not render the judicial vindication meaningless.

Allowing the petition, the high court issued a writ of mandamus (court order directing public authorities to perform their legal duty), directing the state, Google, Indian Kanoon and the registrar generals of the high court and city civil court to mask the petitioner’s name in the digital records.

The court did not direct erasure of the underlying criminal proceedings. Its operative direction was specifically to mask the petitioner’s name in the identified digital records. It also said that if the direction was not followed, the petitioner could approach the court seeking action.