Delhi HC Lays Down Framework for De-indexing Judicial Records, Grants Right to Be Forgotten Relief Across 40-Plus Petitions
Justice Sachin Datta of the Delhi High Court has issued a comprehensive framework governing when individuals may seek de-indexing of judicial records from search engines, balancing informational privacy under Article 21 against the open justice principle.
In a judgment running to 144 pages, Justice Sachin Datta, sitting singly at the High Court of Delhi, disposed of more than forty writ petitions filed by individuals seeking removal or de-indexing of judicial records, news articles, and associated content from search engines and legal databases. The petitioners ranged from persons acquitted of criminal charges, to parties in concluded matrimonial disputes, to a victim of sexual offences whose identity had been exposed on Indian Kanoon without redaction. The judgment, pronounced on 29 May 2026, articulates the legal tests for directing de-indexing and masking, resolves the tension between the right to informational privacy under Article 21 and the principle of open justice, and issues specific directions to Google LLC, iKanoon Software Development Private Limited (Indian Kanoon), and other intermediaries, with MEITY directed to ensure compliance within four weeks.
The Dispute Before the Court
The lead petition, W.P.(C) 1021/2016, was filed by Laksh Vir Singh Yadav, who sought de-linking of a 2015 order of the Special Judge, NDPS, South District, Saket, on the ground that his name appeared in it only incidentally as the husband of an accused, with no role in the criminal proceedings. The batch that accumulated around this petition over nearly a decade presented a wide spectrum of grievances.
Several petitioners had been acquitted of serious criminal charges—including offences under Sections 376, 498A, 306, and 34 IPC—but found that name-based searches on Google or Indian Kanoon surfaced the trial court judgments prominently, creating what they described as a continuing impression of criminality. Others were parties to matrimonial proceedings whose settlement or divorce decrees had attained finality, yet the underlying orders, containing details of allegations exchanged between spouses, remained freely searchable. One petitioner, an Associate Professor, sought removal of a court order directing registration of an FIR on his complaint, on the ground that it contained sensitive personal details about false paternity allegations. A company in the power transmission sector sought de-indexing of news reports premised on FIRs that had since been quashed by the Allahabad High Court following a shareholder settlement.
One petition stood apart entirely: a victim of sexual offences, the complainant in proceedings arising from FIR No. 50/2022 at Women's Police Station, Srinagar, found that orders and judgments containing her name and personal identifiers had been uploaded on Indian Kanoon without any masking, despite multiple representations to the platform.
At the other end, the Court also dealt with petitions it declined to grant: a self-described public figure seeking removal of decade-old content about drunken behaviour, and a petitioner convicted by the Leicester Crown Court for blackmail and fraud who sought erasure of that conviction from search results.
The Legal Questions
The judgment identified the central question as whether an individual whose name appears in judicially accessible records is entitled, under the right to informational privacy guaranteed by Article 21, to seek de-indexing of those records from name-based search results and masking of personal identifiers from publicly accessible digital versions.
Respondents raised several objections. Google LLC contended that it is a private entity not amenable to writ jurisdiction under Article 226, that its search engine performs a passive and neutral indexing function, and that no enforceable right to be forgotten exists under Indian law. Indian Kanoon argued that directing removal would amount to private censorship of public documents and that the IT Act, 2000 already provides the governing framework through Section 69A. Media house respondents relied on R. Rajagopal v. State of Tamil Nadu, (1994) 6 SCC 632, for the proposition that once information forms part of public records, the right to privacy no longer subsists. X Corp. and Microsoft raised similar maintainability objections and emphasised that intermediaries cannot be required to adjudicate competing claims between privacy and free expression.
The Union of India, through MEITY, acknowledged the right to privacy as a fundamental right under K.S. Puttaswamy (Privacy-9J.) v. Union of India, (2017) 10 SCC 1, and accepted that the right to be forgotten is an evolving concept, while pointing out that Section 69A of the IT Act does not cover privacy-based removal requests and that intermediaries act only upon court orders or government notifications under Section 79(3)(b).
How the Bench Reasoned
On maintainability, the Court held that the writ petitions were maintainable, accepting the argument drawn from Kaushal Kishore v. State of Uttar Pradesh, (2023) 4 SCC 1, that rights under Article 21 can be enforced against non-State actors such as search engines, particularly in the absence of effective alternative remedies.
On the substantive right, the Court grounded its analysis in K.S. Puttaswamy, which recognised privacy as an intrinsic facet of Article 21 and acknowledged informational privacy as reflecting an individual's interest in preventing dissemination of personal information. The Court accepted that privacy includes the right to protect reputation not only against falsehoods but also against certain truths, since individuals have a right to control how their image is portrayed.
The Court then addressed the principle of open justice at length. It acknowledged that publication and reporting of judicial proceedings is lawful, that truthful reporting is protected under the Fourth Exception to Section 499 IPC, and that the Supreme Court in Swapnil Tripathi v. Supreme Court of India, (2018) 10 SCC 639, had affirmed public access to judicial proceedings as a component of transparency. The Court examined the Madras High Court's direction in Karthick Theodore v. Registrar General, Madras High Court (W.A.(MD) No. 1901 of 2021) ordering removal of a judgment from an online legal database, while noting that the Supreme Court has stayed that judgment in iKanoon Software Development Pvt. Ltd. v. Karthick Theodore (SLP(C) No. 15311 of 2024), which remains pending.
The Court's resolution of the conflict between open justice and informational privacy turned on proportionality. The continued name-based searchability of a judicial record is not automatically justified by the mere fact that the record is public. Where the legal or social foundation of the proceedings has been extinguished—by acquittal, discharge, quashing, settlement, or the death of the accused—the public interest in perpetuating name-based searchability diminishes sharply. The Court drew a distinction between the existence of a record and its active surfacing in response to a name-based query: de-indexing does not delete the underlying record; it removes the name-based search pathway to it.
The Court set out categories where de-indexing is appropriate: acquittals and discharges where proceedings have attained finality; quashing of FIRs following settlement; concluded matrimonial disputes containing sensitive personal details with no continuing public interest; proceedings that have abated upon the death of the accused; and purely private civil disputes. It identified categories where relief is not appropriate: persons who remain public figures seeking erasure of conduct in the public domain; persons convicted of serious offences where the conviction retains continuing relevance; and cases where the current status of underlying proceedings has not been placed before the Court.
On the role of search engines, the Court rejected the characterisation of Google's function as purely passive. The Court directed that de-indexing orders be complied with in the same manner as a direction under Rule 3(1)(d) of the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021.
For Indian Kanoon specifically, the Court directed that name-based search functionality be restricted in respect of identified records, while making clear that the judgments and orders shall remain accessible on the platform by case number, citation, court details, and date. This distinction—between name-based searchability and case-based accessibility—is the structural core of the relief granted.
On masking, the Court held that petitioners in respect of whom de-indexing has been directed are at liberty to seek masking from the concerned court that rendered the original order or judgment. The Delhi High Court's own masking software, developed by the Delhi High Court Information Technology Committee and made operational after a security audit on 4 October 2023, was noted as enabling advocates and parties-in-person to request identity protection at the point of e-filing.
The petition concerning the sexual offence victim was decided on a separate and more direct basis. The Court held that the identity of a victim of sexual offences is protected by Section 228A IPC (now Section 72 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023), which prohibits disclosure of the identity of any person against whom a sexual offence has been committed. The Court described this as “a statutory mandate of absolute application and not a discretionary relief.” The uploading of orders containing the victim's identity on a publicly searchable database without masking was held to constitute a violation of this statutory prohibition. The Court recorded its concern that a victim was required to approach the High Court to enforce a right that ought to have been given effect without litigation, and directed Indian Kanoon to put in place appropriate systems at the point of upload to prevent future disclosure of victims' identities.
The petition of the public figure seeking removal of content about drunken behaviour was dismissed. The Court held that the right to be forgotten is primarily a protection for private individuals against disproportionate perpetuation of information whose legal or social foundation has been extinguished, and is not a mechanism for selective erasure of past conduct by those who have voluntarily assumed a public identity. The Court noted that if the content is demonstrably false, a separate cause of action in defamation may be available.
The petition seeking removal of a foreign conviction—for blackmail and fifteen counts of fraud by the Leicester Crown Court—was also rejected. The Court held that the right to be forgotten cannot be invoked to efface serious criminal culpability, and that the conviction, being of relatively recent vintage and for offences whose relevance does not diminish with the passage of time, did not warrant relief.
The petition concerning the Bike Bot Scam content was rejected on the material available, as the petitioner had not placed the current status of the underlying proceedings before the Court.
Petition-Specific Directions
The Court granted de-indexing relief in the following categories of petitions:
Acquittal, discharge, and quashing: Petitioners acquitted of offences including rape, criminal intimidation, NDPS offences, and PC Act charges; petitioners discharged from CBI proceedings; petitioners whose FIRs were quashed following settlement. In each case, the Court directed search engine operators and legal database platforms to de-index and disable name-based search functionality across all platforms and domains in respect of the relevant judgments, orders, and associated news articles.
Settlement and compounding: The petitioner convicted under Section 138 of the Negotiable Instruments Act, 1881, who had subsequently compounded the offence through a mediation settlement, was granted de-indexing relief on the ground that the continued availability of the conviction judgment, despite compounding, was disproportionate.
Purely private civil and matrimonial disputes: Petitioners whose matrimonial proceedings had attained finality, including those involving Supreme Court decrees of divorce with consent, were granted de-indexing relief. The Court directed that orders containing sensitive personal details of matrimonial disputes, with no continuing public interest, be de-indexed.
Abated proceedings: The petition concerning the deceased son-in-law, whose criminal trial had abated upon his death on 15 November 2021, was granted de-indexing relief on the ground of proportionality, with the Court noting that the family, including the wife and children of the deceased, is entitled to be protected from the perpetuation of unresolved allegations.
Private content with no public interest: The petition concerning content about the demise of the petitioner's wife in 2015, a purely private matter with no criminal proceedings, was granted relief on the ground that continued searchability of content about the death of a private person serves no public interest.
Statutory right: The sexual offence victim's petition was granted immediate de-indexing relief as a matter of statutory right under Section 228A IPC read with Article 21, with a direction to comply forthwith.
Order
All directions are to be complied with within two weeks from 29 May 2026, unless otherwise specified. Google LLC, Google Inc., Google India Private Ltd., and all other search engine operators are directed to de-index the relevant content from name-based search results, in the manner of a direction under Rule 3(1)(d) of the IT (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021. Indian Kanoon is directed to restrict name-based search functionality in respect of the identified records, while keeping the judgments and orders accessible by case number, citation, court details, and date.
All petitioners granted de-indexing relief are at liberty to seek masking from the concerned court that rendered the original order or judgment. MEITY is directed to communicate these directions to Google LLC, Indian Kanoon, and all other search engine operators and intermediary platforms operating within India, and to file a compliance affidavit within four weeks. Indian Kanoon is separately directed to put in place systems at the point of upload to prevent future disclosure of the identities of victims of sexual offences. All petitions and pending applications are disposed of accordingly.