Karnataka HC Recognises Right to Be Forgotten, Orders Masking of Acquitted Woman's Name From Court Records [Read Order]

Bengaluru: The Karnataka High Court has directed the Registrar General of the High Court, the Registrar of the City Civil Court, the State, Google Inc. and Indian Kanoon to mask the petitioner's name from all digital records and search results relating to a criminal case in which she was finally acquitted, holding that continued online visibility of a case in which a person stands honourably acquitted amounts to a denial of the right to be forgotten and the right to live with dignity under Article 21 of the Constitution.

The petitioner had been arraigned as accused No.3 in Crime No.29/2014 registered at Hebbal Police Station for offences under the Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act, 1956, the Foreigners Act, 1946, the Information Technology Act, 2000 and Sections 370, 370A(2) and 292 of the IPC. After trial as S.C. No.547/2015, she and her co-accused were acquitted by order dated 28.03.2019, the trial court finding that the prosecution had "miserably failed in driving home the guilt beyond all reasonable doubt." The acquittal attained finality. She later obtained refugee status from the United Nations and now resides in Stockholm, Sweden.

The petitioner told the Court that despite the final acquittal, her name continued to surface on Google and on the legal database Indian Kanoon as though she remained an accused in a pending prosecution, and that this digital footprint was costing her employment opportunities and dignity in Sweden. Her counsel, Sri Kariappa N.A., sought a direction to respondents No.1 to 5 to mask her name from their digital records. Counsel for respondent Nos.1 and 2, Sri T.P. Vivekananda, opposed the plea, contending that permitting such masking would open the floodgates and unleash a "Pandora's box" of similar claims.

Justice M. Nagaprasanna rejected that objection outright, holding that "Courts do not adjudicate rights by counting the number of those who may seek justice in the future. They adjudicate them by testing the legitimacy of the claim against the touchstone of the Constitution," adding that constitutional guarantees are not to be rationed for fear that others may invoke them.

Tracing the evolution of the right to oblivion in France and Italy and the right to be forgotten under the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation, the Court relied on the Supreme Court's observations on informational privacy in Justice K.S. Puttaswamy (Retd) v. Union of India, (2017) 10 SCC 1, that humans forget but the internet does not, and that individuals are entitled to reinvent themselves without being permanently shackled to their past. The Court also drew upon the Delhi High Court's decision in SJ v. Union of India, 2023 SCC OnLine Del 3309, where search engines and publishers were directed to remove and block articles concerning a quashed FIR, noting that Delhi permits masking of an accused's name across all search engines.

Holding that a final acquittal carries the "imprimatur of innocence" and must be given equal recognition in the digital sphere as in a courtroom, the Court observed that "to permit obsolete digital records to perpetually resurrect allegations that have long been buried by a judgment of acquittal would amount to allowing technology to defeat justice and memory to triumph over judicial truth."

Allowing the writ petition, the Court issued a mandamus to respondent Nos.1 to 5 to forthwith mask the petitioner's name from digital records pertaining to S.C. No.547/2015 and the connected criminal petitions, granting her liberty to initiate coercive proceedings in case of non-compliance.

Appearances:

For the Petitioner: Sri Kariappa N.A., Advocate.

For Respondent Nos.1 and 2: Sri T.P. Vivekananda, Advocate.

For Respondent No.3: Sri K. Nageshwarappa, HCGP.

Case Title: XXXXX vs. The Registrar General, High Court of Karnataka & Others, WP No. 22456 of 2025 (GM-RES)

[Read Order]