Delhi High Court Right To Be Forgotten Google Indian Kanoon De Indexing

Disposing of a batch of petitions seeking to enforce individuals’ right to be forgotten, the Delhi High Court Friday directed search engine operators and legal database platforms such as Indian Kanoon to de-index name-based search functionality with respect to judgments, orders, or news articles.

It also directed Indian Kanoon to restrict name-based search functionality within its platform with respect to records of petitioners who were before the Delhi HC, while making it clear that the “judgments and orders shall remain accessible on Indian Kanoon by case number, citation, Court details and date”.

Directing compliance with the direction within two weeks, the HC held, “No law authorises Google or any search engine to perpetually index and surface judicial records in a manner that overrides the individual’s fundamental right to informational privacy.” De-indexing does not remove or delete a court judgment from public records. It simply prevents a person’s name from appearing as a search result, making the judgment harder to find through a name-based internet search while keeping it accessible through case details or citations.

The court disposed of nearly 38 petitions, with the oldest dating back to 2016. The petitioners included persons who have been acquitted of criminal charges or were parties to purely private civil or matrimonial disputes or persons whose names appear incidentally in judicial records of proceedings to which they were not parties.

The petitioners had contended that the continued availability and name-based searchability of judicial records bearing their names in the digital public domain, such as in legal databases like ‘Indian Kanoon’, causes disproportionate and continuing harm to their reputations, dignity, and life prospects, excessive to any legitimate public interest served by such continued accessibility.

Justice Sachin Datta observed, “The right to be forgotten thus reflects the evolution of privacy in response to the permanence of online information. In a society where digital records are virtually indelible, the ability to seek erasure ensures that informational self-determination remains effective. It protects individuals from perpetual exposure to past events that may no longer bear relevance, while preserving their dignity and autonomy in society.”

In the absence of a comprehensive statutory framework to govern the right to be forgotten, and while noting that court records are anyway accessible otherwise, the court held, “… a private individual’s name functions as a permanent and unlimited retrieval key through a commercial search engine, enabling any casual internet user to instantly access the entirety of an individual’s engagement with legal/ judicial processes…”

“… It would be a perverse extension of the concept to hold that open justice facilitates Google (or any other search engine) to thrust an individual’s arrest, accusation or legal misfortune in the face of every person who searches that individual’s name, and to do so with particular force (to ‘satisfy’ a query), without regard to the context. An acquittal buried at the bottom of the ‘search results’, while the arrest dominates the search results, cannot be characterised as an ingredient of ‘open justice’,” the court further said.

The court has not considered the aspect of complete removal or take down of any judgment/s from ‘Indian Kanoon’ or any other legal database, and only dealt with the confines of whether relief to the effect of ‘de-indexing’ from name-based search results can be allowed and if name-based search functionality within ‘Indian Kanoon’ can be restricted.

The SC is already dealing with the larger question of takedowns of entire judgment from Indian Kanoon.

The court has also prescribed parameters for courts to decide on masking of names and personal identifiers for judicial records in cases of acquittal, discharge, or quashing of criminal proceedings when it is sought by any party involved.

The Court has directed that petitioners in whose cases de-indexing has been directed shall be at liberty to seek masking from the court concerned that rendered the original order or judgment.

Those granted relief by the Delhi HC include persons acquitted of criminal charges, including by CBI, acquitted of charges of abetment of suicide and cruelty, charges of rape, sexual assault and criminal intimidation, as acquitted of charges of sexual offence.

The court has addressed this issue in its verdict.

It recorded, “De-indexing does not erase the judicial record. The judgment or order continues to exist on the court’s website, on Indian Kanoon, or on whichever platform hosts it. It remains accessible to anyone who knows the case number, the citation, the court, or any other purposeful identifier. The record is preserved in its entirety for institutional, precedential and accountability purposes. What changes is only that the name concerned (whether an individual or an entity) ceases to function as an unlimited retrieval key that instantly and effortlessly surfaces the record for any casual internet user who happens to search that name. In respect to ‘Indian Kanoon’, disabling name- based search functionality serves the purpose.”

Sohini Ghosh is a Senior Correspondent at The Indian Express. Previously based in Ahmedabad covering Gujarat, she recently moved to the New Delhi bureau, where she primarily covers legal developments at the Delhi High Court Professional Profile Background: An alumna of the Asian College of Journalism (ACJ), she previously worked with ET NOW before joining The Indian Express. Core Beats: Her reporting is currently centered on the Delhi High Court, with a focus on high-profile constitutional disputes, disputes over intellectual property, criminal and civil cases, issues of human rights and regulatory law (especially in the areas of technology and healthcare). Earlier Specialty: In Gujarat, she was known for her rigorous coverage in the beats of crime, law and policy, and social justice issues, including the 2002 riot cases, 2008 serial bomb blast case, 2016 flogging of Dalits in Una, among others. She has extensively covered health in the state, including being part of the team that revealed the segregation of wards at the state’s largest government hospital on lines of faith in April 2020. With Ahmedabad being a UNESCO heritage city, she has widely covered urban development and heritage issues, including the redevelopment of the Sabarmati Ashram Recent Notable Articles (Late 2025) Her recent reporting from the Delhi High Court covers major political, constitutional, corporate, and public-interest legal battles: High-Profile Case Coverage She has extensively covered the various legal battles - including for compensation under the aegis of North East Delhi Riots Claims Commission - pertaining to the 2020 northeast Delhi riots, as well as 1984 anti-Sikh riots. She has also led coverage at the intersection of technology and governance, and its impact on the citizenry, from, and beyond courtrooms — such as the government’s stakeholder consultations for framing AI-Deepfake policy. Signature Style Sohini is recognized for her sustained reporting from courtrooms and beyond. She specialises in breaking down dense legal arguments to make legalese accessible for readers. Her transition from Gujarat to Delhi has seen her expand her coverage on regulatory, corporate and intellectual property law, while maintaining a strong commitment to human rights and lacuna in the criminal justice system. X (Twitter): @thanda_ghosh ... Read More