The Karnataka High Court mandated Google and Indian Kanoon mask an acquitted woman's name from search results. The ruling confirms the "Right to be Forgotten" as a facet of informational privacy under Article 21, directly challenging digital permanence. For anyone with a past digital footprint, this sets a precedent for legal recourse against obsolete online records.
How We Got Here
The Supreme Court's 2017 Justice K.S. Puttaswamy judgment first established informational privacy as a fundamental right under Article 21. More recently in May, the Delhi High Court delivered a landmark judgment covering 37 petitions, directing Google to de-index judgments from name-based searches.
The Numbers
- The petitioner was acquitted in a 2019 criminal case for offences including the Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act.
- Despite her acquittal, her name appeared in search results via Google and Indian Kanoon, impacting her employment in Sweden.
- Justice M. Nagaprasanna stressed that "obsolete digital records" cannot defeat justice, explicitly quoting Puttaswamy: "Humans forget, but the internet does not forget."
- The order also directs the Karnataka High Court Registry and Bengaluru City Civil Court Registry to mask her name.
- The Nagpur Bench of the Bombay High Court recently took a similar stance, directing its Registry to mask a petitioner's identity.
What Happens Next
🇮🇳 Why This Matters for India
For product managers building reputation management tools or founders dealing with public figures, this ruling establishes a clear legal basis for digital redaction services.
The Take
The real challenge now shifts to engineering: building scalable, precise mechanisms for de-indexing without undermining judicial transparency. This will push product teams at Google and platforms like Indian Kanoon into tricky ethical and technical territory.
Source:
MediaNama ↗