The Delhi High Court has held that the "right to be forgotten" flows from the constitutional right to privacy under Article 21 and enables individuals to seek removal of personal information from public digital accessibility when it no longer serves a legitimate public purpose.

Justice Sachin Datta, in a 144-page judgment delivered on May 29, laid down a framework governing de-indexing of judicial records from search engines and masking of personal identifiers from publicly accessible court records.

Also read: On the ‘right to be forgotten’ from judicial records | Explained 

“India presently lacks a comprehensive statutory framework explicitly governing the right to be forgotten. However, the absence of specific legislation does not preclude constitutional courts from recognising and enforcing this right,” the court remarked.

The court’s decision came while hearing over 30 petitions filed by a diverse group of individuals, including persons who had been acquitted of criminal charges, parties to matrimonial disputes, persons whose proceedings had been quashed or settled, and individuals whose names appeared incidentally in judicial records.

The petitioners shared a common grievance that the continued availability and name-based searchability of judicial records bearing their names in the digital public domain causes “disproportionate and continuing harm to their reputations, dignity, and life prospects”.

The court held, “that persons, who have been acquitted, discharged, or whose proceedings have been quashed are entitled to have that legal determination reflected in their digital identity/persona”.

Justice Datta remarked that search engines such as Google cannot be permitted to indefinitely link individuals to judicial records through name-based searches where proceedings have ended in acquittal, discharge, quashing, settlement or involve disputes of a purely private nature.

The court noted that the principle of open justice requires judicial records to remain available and accessible, but does not mandate that a private individual’s name should function as a permanent retrieval key through commercial search engines.

“The principle of open justice was conceived to ensure that the judicial process is accessible and fully transparent. It would be incongruous if the same serves as justification for the perpetual and indiscriminate amplification of a person’s worst travails with legal processes,” it added.

Court cites exceptions

However, the court clarified that de-indexing would not be appropriate in every case. It held that relief may be denied in cases involving conviction for offences against women or children, where a person stands convicted. It also said cases involving persons convicted of offences involving breach of public trust, including offences by public servants, elected representatives, and those in positions of fiduciary responsibility may not be appropriate case for de-indexing.

Giving relief to several petitioners, the court directed search engines, legal database platforms and other intermediaries to de-index specified judgments, orders and related reportage from name-based search results and disable name-based search functionality in relation to those records.

The court further held that de-indexing directions issued pursuant to this framework shall accordingly operate globally.