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In A First An Indian Court Upholds The ‘Right To Be Forgotten’

In the Internet age access to information is quick and procuring personal information or antecedents of an individual is much easier. Acknowledging this fact and the sensitive nature of case in hand, the Karnataka High Court in a landmark judgment recently  Sri Vasunathan vs The Registrar General, has accepted, applied and approved the ‘Right to be Forgotten’ in Indian context.

The “right to be forgotten” or “the right to be erased” allows an individual to request for removal of his/her personal information/data online. The origin of this right can be traced back to the French jurisprudence on the ‘right to oblivion’ or droit à l’oubli. The rationale behind it was to allow offenders who had served their sentence to object to the publication of information regarding their crime and conviction in order to ease their process of social integration. these lines that the European Union Data Protection Directive, 1995 acknowledged the right to be forgotten, wherein it was stipulated that the member states should give people a right to obtain from the ‘controller’ the rectification, erasure or blocking of data relating to them, the processing of which did not comply with the provisions of the Directive.

The Karnataka High Court speaking through Justice Anand Bypareddy, while passing an order in a writ petition, directed its Registry to make sure that an internet search made in the public domain would not reflect the woman’s name in a previous criminal order passed by the same High Court. The High Court conclusively observed, “This is in line with the trend in Western countries of ‘right to be forgotten’ in sensitive cases involving women in general and highly sensitive cases involving rape or affecting the modesty and reputation of the person concerned.” The woman’s father had approached the court seeking directions to mask the woman’s name in an earlier order passed by the High Court. The petitioner had stated that his daughter feared grave repercussions if her name was associated with her earlier case and it would affect her relationship with her husband and also her reputation in the society.

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