Right to be forgotten: Delhi High Court directs Google, Indian Kanoon to disable name-based search
Court issued order to protect the privacy of individuals acquitted in cases or involved in private disputes.
De-indexing merely masks a court judgment from appearing in name-based internet searches to protect an individual's privacy.(Representation/Generated with Gemini) Upholding an individual’s right to be forgotten, the Delhi High Court Friday directed search engine operators and legal database platforms to de-index name-based search functionality with respect to judgments, orders, or news articles. It held that no law allows Google or other search engines to show court records for cases that have ended in an acquittal, discharge, quashing or settlement or a private in nature.
Justice Sachin Datta, in a 144-page order on May 29, and made public on Sunday, observed, “… permanent and unlimited name-based digital searchability is wholly disproportionate to any legitimate aim that might be identified.”
De-indexing does not remove or delete a court judgment from public records. It simply prevents a person’s name from appearing as a search result, making the judgment harder to find through a name-based internet search while keeping it accessible through case details or citations.
The court decided 38 petitions — the oldest dating back to 2016 — filed by various persons including those who have been acquitted of criminal charges or were parties to purely private civil or matrimonial disputes or persons whose names appear incidentally in judicial records of proceedings to which they were not parties.
The petitioners had contended that the continued availability and name-based searchability of judicial records bearing their names in the digital public domain, such as in legal databases of ‘Indian Kanoon’, causes disproportionate and continuing harm to their reputations, dignity, and life prospects, excessive to any legitimate public interest served by such continued accessibility.
The HC held, “No law authorises Google or any search engine to perpetually index and surface judicial records in a manner that overrides the individual’s fundamental right to informational privacy.”
Directing compliance with the direction within two weeks, the court also directed Indian Kanoon (legal database platform) to restrict name-based search functionality within its platform with respect to records of petitioners who were before the Delhi HC, while making it clear that the “judgments and orders shall remain accessible on Indian Kanoon by case number, citation, Court details and date”.
Question of privacy
Justice Sachin Datta observed that the right to be forgotten reflects the evolution of privacy in response to the permanence of online information.
“… In a society where digital records are virtually indelible, the ability to seek erasure ensures that informational self-determination remains effective. It protects individuals from perpetual exposure to past events that may no longer bear relevance, while preserving their dignity and autonomy in society,” the court observed.
In the absence of a comprehensive statutory framework to govern the right to be forgotten, and while noting that court records are anyway accessible otherwise, the court held, “… a private individual’s name functions as a permanent and unlimited retrieval key through a commercial search engine, enabling any casual internet user to instantly access the entirety of an individual’s engagement with legal/ judicial processes…”
“… It would be a perverse extension of the concept to hold that open justice facilitates Google (or any other search engine) to thrust an individual’s arrest, accusation or legal misfortune in the face of every person who searches that individual’s name, and to do so with particular force (to ‘satisfy’ a query), without regard to the context. An acquittal buried at the bottom of the ‘search results’, while the arrest dominates the search results, cannot be characterised as an ingredient of ‘open justice’,” the court further said.
What will de-indexing entail?
The court has addressed this issue in its verdict.
It recorded, “De-indexing does not erase the judicial record. The judgment or order continues to exist on the court’s website, on Indian Kanoon, or on whichever platform hosts it. It remains accessible to anyone who knows the case number, the citation, the court, or any other purposeful identifier. The record is preserved in its entirety for institutional, precedential and accountability purposes. What changes is only that the name concerned (whether an individual or an entity) ceases to function as an unlimited retrieval key that instantly and effortlessly surfaces the record for any casual internet user who happens to search that name. In respect to ‘Indian Kanoon’, disabling name- based search functionality serves the purpose.”
The Court has directed that petitioners in whose cases de-indexing has been directed shall be at liberty to seek masking from the court concerned that rendered the original order or judgment.
Those granted relief by the Delhi HC include persons acquitted of criminal charges, including by CBI, acquitted of charges of abetment of suicide and cruelty, charges of rape, sexual assault and criminal intimidation, as acquitted of charges of sexual offence.
The court has not considered the aspect of complete removal or take down of any judgment/s from ‘Indian Kanoon’ or any other legal database, and only dealt with the confines of whether relief to the effect of ‘de-indexing’ from name-based search results can be allowed and if name-based search functionality within ‘Indian Kanoon’ can be restricted.
The SC is dealing with the larger question of takedowns of entire judgment from Indian Kanoon.
The court has also prescribed parameters for courts to decide on masking of names and personal identifiers for judicial records in cases of acquittal, discharge, or quashing of criminal proceedings when it is sought by any party involved.
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