Delhi High Court upholds Right to be Forgotten of American citizen; directs Google, Indian Kanoon to block an acquittal judgment

The Delhi High Court recently upheld the right of an individual to be forgotten while granting interim relief to an American citizen of Indian origin who was acquitted of criminal charges.

The Court directed Google and Indian Kanoon to block the judgment copy available online till the next date of hearing in the case.

The Single Judge Bench of Justice Prathiba Singh held,

“Owing to the irreparable prejudice which may be caused to the Petitioner, his social life and his career prospects, in spite of the Petitioner having ultimately been acquitted in the said case via the said judgment, prima facie this Court is of the opinion that the Petitioner is entitled to some interim protection, while the legal issues are pending adjudication by this Court.

Accordingly, Respondent Nos. 2 and 3 (Google and Indian Kanoon) are directed to remove the said judgment dated 29th January 2013...from their search results. Respondent No.4 – Indian Kanoon is directed to block the said judgement from being accessed by using search engines such as Google/Yahoo etc., till the next date of hearing.”

By way of background, when the petitioner had visited India in 2009, a case under the Narcotics Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act, 1985, was lodged against him. In 2011, a trial court acquitted him of the charges, prompting an appeal before the Delhi High Court. A Single Judge in 2013 upheld the acquittal.

Owing to the fact that the 2013 judgment was available through a Google search to any potential employer, the petitioner apprehended that the same would affect his employment prospects. The petitioner then sent legal notices to Google, Indian Kanoon and vLex.in. However, the first two platforms did not remove the judgment. He thus filed a petition before the Delhi High Court seeking removal of the judgment, in recognition of his Right to Privacy under Article 21 of the Constitution.

Appearing for the petitioner before the High Court, Advocate Sanjay Kumar said that his client was facing hurdles and disadvantages in the professional sphere given the fact that the judgment was available online.

Despite having graduated from an institute of major repute with a fine academic record, he is unable to find any employment, Kumar argued.

The Court was faced with the prospect of balancing the petitioner’s Right to be Forgotten on the one hand, and the Right to Information of the public and maintenance of transparency in judicial records on the other.

Justice Singh ultimately upheld the petitioner’s Right to be Forgotten as part of his Right to Privacy, citing the precedents of KS Puttaswamy v. Union of India and Zulfiqar Ahman Khan v. Quintillion Businessman Media.

The petitioner was thus granted interim relief in the form of a direction to Google to remove the judgment from its search results. Indian Kanoon was directed to block the said judgment from being accessed through search engines such as Google and Yahoo. The interim relief will operate till the next date of hearing in the case, which is August 20, 2021.

The Right to be Forgotten is the right to have one’s personal details expunged from public records, including but not limited to the internet, specially once the information ceases to be of use to the public.

The Kerala High Court recently admitted a plea seeking the erasure of the petitioner’s personal details from a Google search result.

In November last year, the Orissa High Court lamented the lack of a mechanism to permanently delete information from the internet in order to safeguard the right to be forgotten. The same was observed in a bail application moved by a person who videographed intimate photographs of his sexual assault on a woman and uploaded them on Facebook.