The division bench of Justice Urmila Joshi‑Phalke and Justice Nivedita Mehta, sitting at the Nagpur seat of the Bombay High Court, considered a criminal writ petition in which the petitioner sought protection of his privacy after the criminal proceedings against him had been quashed. The bench observed that the concept of the right to privacy, which is an intrinsic part of Article 21 of the Constitution, necessarily incorporates the right to be forgotten. It emphasized that in the digital era, information concerning a person who has been acquitted or against whom proceedings have been quashed continues to remain accessible on the internet, and that such continued availability cannot be justified when no public interest is served by keeping the information alive.
The bench further noted that while access to information is a fundamental aspect of a democratic society, it must be balanced against an individual’s right to privacy. It held that the proportionality test requires that, once the legal proceedings have ended in the petitioner’s favour, the state should not allow the persistence of personal data that could cause prejudice in professional and social spheres. The court therefore concluded that the petitioner’s claim fell within the ambit of the right to privacy and deserved protection.
The petitioner’s case originated from an FIR lodged in October 2017. The FIR was subsequently quashed by a division bench of the Bombay High Court in November 2018 after the complainant and the petitioner reached an amicable settlement. Despite the legal exoneration, the petitioner contended that the unredacted digital records of the District Court judgment remained prominently accessible on the court’s website and were indexed by external search engines. He argued that this algorithmic permanence surfaced during routine background checks for employment and education, thereby prejudicing his career progression and causing social stigma to himself, his family and his minor daughter.
In support of his claim, the petitioner prayed for the masking of his personal identifiers from the digital portals of the High Court and the District Court, and for the delinking of the judgment from search engine indexes. He clarified that he did not seek the destruction of the court records; his request was limited to ensuring that the case details and the judgment were not publicly available on the court’s system website. The bench accepted that the dispute between the parties had been amicably resolved and that the petitioner’s prayer was confined to the digital availability of the records.
After hearing the arguments of Advocate SB Tiwari for the petitioner and Additional Public Prosecutor VA Thakare for the State, the bench directed the Registrar General of the Bombay High Court to mask the petitioner’s name in all online records and to replace it with the initials “ABC”. The order further required that the masked version be the one displayed on the court’s website and that the original personal identifiers be removed from search engine indexing where feasible. The bench disposed of the plea after issuing these directions.
The decision underscores the evolving jurisprudence on the right to be forgotten in India, linking it directly to the constitutional guarantee of privacy. It also illustrates the court’s willingness to tailor relief to the specific circumstances of a case, allowing the retention of judicial records for legitimate purposes while protecting individuals from the enduring adverse effects of outdated online information.