Delhi HC recognises ‘right to be forgotten’, directs search engines to disable ‘name-based’ search in court orders, news
Recognizing an individual’s “right to be forgotten”, the Delhi High Court held that search engines such as Google cannot be permanently allowed to display judicial records in a name-based search for a case that is private in nature or results in acquittal, discharge, annulment or settlement.
Relieving a group of petitioners, the court ordered authorities, search engine operators and legal database platforms to de-index and disable “name-based search functionality” of judgments, orders and news articles cited by the petitioners.
Also read: On the ‘Right to be Forgotten’ from Judicial Records | Announced
However, the Court is not responsible for crimes committed against women or children or crimes involving abuse of public trust, public officials, elected representatives, etc. It ruled that removal from the index was not appropriate in some cases requiring conviction due to crimes committed by .
Indexing means removing a particular web page or website from a search engine’s database.
Justice Sachin Datta said transparency is integral to judicial independence and accountability, but continuing to link a person’s name with online judicial records causes disproportionate harm to that person’s information privacy, dignity and reputation, which cannot be justified by any legitimate public interest.
The judge said the “right to be forgotten,” which is “a broader expression of the right to privacy” under Article 21 of the Constitution, protects individuals from “constant exposure” to irrelevant past events and serves no legitimate purpose with the “unlimited and unrestricted name-based searchability” of judicial records related to resolved cases.
The court ruled on more than thirty petitions from individuals exercising their “right to be forgotten” to remove criminal records from name-based search results and to hide their personal identifiers from publicly available digital versions of those records.
In its 144-page decision, the court also ruled that the petitioners would be at liberty to request that their identities be “masked” in the original decision or order of the relevant court.
“An individual’s right to be forgotten, which includes the right to request the removal or restriction of personal information from public digital availability where personal information is no longer relevant or serves a legitimate public purpose, naturally and necessarily follows from the constitutional recognition of information privacy under Article 21,” the court said in its ruling on May 29.
“In the categories of cases with which this court deals, inter alia, acquittals, discharges, annulments, compromises, consolidations, and disputes of a purely private nature, no law authorizes Google or any search engine to continually index and surface judicial records in a manner that would override an individual’s fundamental right to informational privacy.”
“An unlimited and unrestricted name-based search of records whose basic transactions have been resolved in favor of the relevant person does not serve any legitimate purpose with sufficient specificity,” he said.
However, the Court refused to grant compensation to PP Madhva, who claimed to be a public figure and wanted the index to be removed after a settlement was reached in the sexual crime case filed against him.
The Court clarified that there remains a public interest in the accessibility of proceedings touching serious allegations against a public figure.
It also rejected relief to reality show celebrity Ashutosh Kaushik, who had sought the removal of posts, videos and articles depicting various incidents of drunken behaviour, saying the “right to be forgotten” was not a mechanism to “selectively erase” past behavior by a public figure.
The court is responsible for crimes committed against women or children or crimes involving abuse of public trust, public officials, elected representatives, etc. It decided that it was not appropriate to exclude from the index in some cases, such as cases requiring conviction for crimes committed by .
He added that indexing may need to be removed if litigation declines due to the death of a party and digital accessibility harms the surviving family.
The court also stated that de-indexing should be done globally, as the fundamental right to information privacy is not limited to a particular region.
He stated that the concept of ‘open justice’ requires that judicial records be kept and made available to persons with a legitimate purpose, but does not require the name of a private person to be used by any internet user as a “permanent and unrestricted access key through a commercial search engine” to gain instant access to his/her participation in legal processes.
Despite any indexing, court records remain accessible by case number, citation or other searches.
The Court observed that search engines are commercial platforms that generate revenue by exploiting user searches and linking them with advertising opportunities and Rule 3(1)(d) of the IT Rules mandates such intermediaries to comply with orders directing removal or restriction of content.
“All the above instructions shall be complied with within two weeks from today. Where relief is granted, Google LLC/ Google Inc./Google India Private Ltd. and all other search engine operators are directed to index relevant content, orders, decisions and related news from name-based search results and shall comply with the same,” the court said.
“The Union of India, through the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MEITY), is directed to ensure that the respondent intermediaries comply with these instructions within the above mentioned period.”
It was published – 01 June 2026 16:32 IST
