Delhi High Court directs Google, Indian Kanoon to de-index name-based search
Imagine a person once caught in a legal case — perhaps they were later acquitted or their name simply appeared in a court document — but years later, anyone who Googles their name still finds that record. The Delhi High Court has now said this is a violation of your fundamental rights and that you can ask for your name to be removed from such search results.In a 144-page judgment delivered on May 29, the Delhi HC ruled that the “right to be forgotten” is protected under Article 21 of the Constitution of India, which guarantees the right to privacy. The verdict came on a batch of petitions from people who had been acquitted, discharged from cases, involved in divorce proceedings or whose names had appeared in court records only in passing.
“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,” Live Law quoted the court order in its report.
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Court distinguishes between de-indexing and deletion
The HC said that if your personal information appears in an old court record online and it no longer serves any public interest, you have the right to ask that it stop appearing in name-based internet searches.
But this does not mean the record gets deleted. In its order, the court drew a clear line between de-indexing, masking and deletion.
De-indexing means a person’s name no longer shows up in Google search results linking to that record but the record still exists on the internet and can be found through purpose searches.
Masking means a person’s name in the digital copy of the court judgment is replaced with something like “ABC” or “XYZ”, so readers cannot identify them. The original, unedited record is still preserved safely in court archives. According to the judgment, such masking does not amount to censorship but serves as a calibrated mechanism to protect informational privacy without undermining the principle of open justice.
The court has not asked for deletion of records in its order.
The High Court added that this right is not absolute. It must be weighed against other important values like the freedom of the press, the public’s right to information and the principle that court proceedings should be open and transparent.
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Google and Indian Kanoon must comply
Importantly, the Court held that a masking order issued by a competent court would qualify as an enforceable judicial direction under Rule 3(1)(d) of the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021.
Upon receiving such an order, Google and other search engine operators would be required to de-index the masked judgment from name-based search results, while platforms such as Indian Kanoon would have to disable name-based search functionality for the concerned judgment.
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