New Delhi, Jun 1 Recognising an individual's "right to be forgotten", the Delhi High Court has ruled that search engines like Google cannot be perpetually permitted to show judicial records in name-based search for a case which is private in nature or has ended in an acquittal, discharge, quashing or settlement.
Giving relief to a group of petitioners, the court ordered authorities, search engine operators and legal database platforms to de-index and disable their "name-based search functionality" in respect of judgments, orders and news articles cited by the petitioners.
The court, however, held that de-indexing is not appropriate in certain cases involving conviction for offences against women or children or for offences involving breach of public trust, offences by public servants, elected representatives, etc.
De-indexing refers to the removal of a specific web page or website from a search engine's database.
Justice Sachin Datta said while transparency is integral to judicial independence and accountability, the continued association of an individual's name with a judicial record online causes disproportionate harm to their informational privacy, dignity and reputation, which is not justified by any legitimate public interest.
The judge said the "right to be forgotten" -- which is a "broader manifestation of the right to privacy" under Article 21 of the Constitution -- protects individuals from "perpetual exposure" to irrelevant past events, and no legitimate aim is served by "unlimited and unrestricted name-based searchability" of judicial records related to proceedings that have been resolved.
The court passed the verdict on a batch of over thirty petitions by individuals who invoked their "right to be forgotten" to de-index judicial records from name-based search results and to mask their personal identifiers from publicly accessible digital versions of those records.
In its 144-page judgement, the court further ruled that the petitioners shall be at liberty to seek "masking" of their identity in the original judgement or order from the court concerned.
"The right to be forgotten, understood as subsuming the right of an individual to seek removal or restriction of personal information from public digital accessibility, where such information is no longer relevant or serves no legitimate public purpose, flows naturally and necessarily from the constitutional recognition of informational privacy under Article 21," said the court in the judgment passed on May 29.
"In the categories of cases with which this court is concerned, inter alia, acquittals, discharges, quashings, settlements, compounding and disputes of purely private nature, 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.
"No legitimate aim of sufficient specificity is served by the unlimited and unrestricted name-based searchability of records whose underlying proceedings have been resolved, in favour of the concerned individual," it stated.
The court, however, refused to grant relief to PP Madhva, who claimed to be a public figure and sought de-indexing after a settlement in a sexual offence case against him.
The court clarified that there is a continuing public interest in the accessibility of proceedings that touch upon serious allegations against a public figure.
It also declined relief to reality show celebrity Ashutosh Kaushik who sought the removal of posts, videos and articles depicting several incidents of drunken behaviour, saying that "right to be forgotten" is not a mechanism for the "selective erasure" of a public figure's past conduct.
The court held that de-indexing is not appropriate in certain cases like those involving conviction for offences against women or children or for offences involving breach of public trust, offences by public servants, elected representatives, etc.
It added that de-indexing may be warranted if the case has abated due to a party's death and its digital accessibility harms the surviving family.
The court also said that since the fundamental right to informational privacy is not limited to a territory, de-indexing has to operate globally.
It stated that while the concept of 'open justice' requires that judicial records be maintained and remain accessible to those with a legitimate purpose, it does not require that a private individual's name be used as a "permanent and unlimited retrieval key, through a commercial search engine" by any internet user to instantly access his engagement with legal processes.
Despite any de-indexing, the court records continue to remain accessible by case number, citation or other purposeful search, it added.
The court observed that search engines are commercial platforms that generate revenue by leveraging user searches and associating them with advertising opportunities, and Rule 3(1)(d) of the IT Rules obliges such intermediaries to comply with orders directing removal or restriction of content.
"All aforesaid directions shall be complied with within two weeks from today. Where relief has been granted, Google LLC/ Google Inc./Google India Private Ltd. and all other search engine operators are directed to de-index the relevant content, orders, judgments and associated reportage from name-based search results, and shall comply in the same manner," ordered the court.
"The Union of India, through the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MEITY), is directed to ensure compliance with these directions by the respondent intermediaries within the aforementioned time period," it added.
