Acquittal Must Reach the Digital World Too: Karnataka HC Orders Masking of Name from Google and Indian Kanoon

Karnataka High Court directs Google and Indian Kanoon to mask the name of a woman acquitted in 2019, holding that a final acquittal obliges digital repositories to reflect judicial vindication and cannot be rendered illusory by persistent online records.

The High Court of Karnataka, sitting at Bengaluru, has directed Google Inc. and Indian Kanoon to forthwith mask the name of a woman who was acquitted in 2019 after standing trial in a sessions case arising from a 2014 crime. Justice M. Nagaprasanna, sitting singly, issued a writ of mandamus against five respondents — including the Registrar General of the High Court, the Registrar of the City Civil Court, the State of Karnataka, Google, and Indian Kanoon — holding that a final acquittal carries a constitutional obligation on digital repositories to ensure that judicial vindication is not negated by persistent electronic records. The court grounded its direction in the right to informational privacy and the right to be forgotten, both treated as facets of Article 21 of the Constitution.

The Criminal Case and Acquittal

The petitioner was arrayed as accused No. 3 in Crime No. 29/2014 registered by Hebbal Police Station, Bengaluru. The offences alleged against her were punishable under Sections 4, 5 and 7 of the Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act, 1956, Section 14 of the Foreigners Act, 1946, Section 67 of the Information Technology Act, 2000, and Sections 370, 370A(2) and 292 of the Indian Penal Code, 1860.

A charge sheet was filed and the matter was committed to the Court of Session, where it was tried as SC No. 547/2015 before the LXVIII Additional City Civil and Sessions Judge, Bangalore City. On 28 March 2019, the Sessions Court acquitted all three accused, recording that the prosecution had “miserably failed in driving home the guilt beyond all reasonable doubt.” The acquittal attained finality and was never challenged.

The petitioner had also previously approached the High Court at the investigative stage, seeking bail through Criminal Petition No. 1628/2014, connected with Criminal Petition Nos. 1637/2014 and 1979/2014. The High Court allowed those petitions and granted bail. The petitioner asserts she was not the perpetrator of the alleged crime but one of its victims.

Life After Acquittal — and the Digital Problem

Freed from prosecution, the petitioner applied to the United Nations for refugee status. Her application was accepted, and she was granted refugee status along with permanent residence in Sweden, where she has since been residing in Stockholm.

The difficulty arose when she searched her own name on Google and browsed Indian Kanoon, the widely used legal database. Despite the final acquittal, her name continued to appear in digital records as accused No. 3 in SC No. 547/2015. The case was displayed as though criminal proceedings were still subsisting against her. The acquittal order itself — though it had restored her legal innocence — did not displace the digital footprint that tied her name to the original charge sheet and trial proceedings.

Prospective employers in Sweden, conducting routine background checks online, encountered not the judgment of acquittal but records associating her with prosecution for offences under statutes dealing with immoral trafficking and related matters. The consequence was denial of employment opportunities. Counsel for the petitioner, Sri Kariappa N.A., submitted to the court that even living with dignity had become difficult, as a click on her name revealed apparent pendency of the criminal case.

The Respondents’ Objection

Sri T.P. Vivekananda, appearing for respondent Nos. 1 and 2 (the Registrar General of the High Court and the Registrar of the City Civil Court), opposed the petition. His submission was that permitting name masking would open floodgates: every litigant could come forward seeking masking of their name from digital records, and the petition deserved to be dismissed on that ground.

The court took that argument head on rather than sidestepping it.

Constitutional Reasoning: Acquittal as More Than a Paper Declaration

Justice Nagaprasanna framed the question as one of constitutional imperative rather than judicial discretion. The court held that an acquittal attaining finality is not a mere procedural culmination of a criminal trial; it is a solemn judicial declaration that the prosecution has failed to establish guilt and a reaffirmation of the presumption of innocence. Once that declaration is made, every repository of judicial information carries a corresponding obligation to ensure that the vindication is not rendered hollow by what the digital world continues to display.

The court was direct about the paradox it was addressing: a court of law may pronounce innocence, but if the virtual world continues to portray the individual as an accused, the acquittal risks becoming a paper declaration, bereft of any meaningful consequence. The judgment stated that to permit obsolete digital records to perpetually resurrect allegations buried by a judgment of acquittal would be to allow technology to defeat justice and memory to triumph over judicial truth.

The court drew on the Supreme Court’s nine-judge Constitution Bench judgment in Justice K.S. Puttaswamy (Retd.) v. Union of India, (2017) 10 SCC 1, which examined informational privacy as a facet of the right to privacy under Article 21. The Apex Court had observed in that judgment that the right of an individual to exercise control over personal data encompasses the right to control one’s existence on the internet, and that while this right is not absolute, the impact of the digital age results in information being permanent: “Humans forget, but the internet does not forget and does not let humans forget.”

From Puttaswamy, the court drew the principle that the right to be forgotten — recognised in the European Union through the General Data Protection Regulation of 2016, and with earlier roots in French and Italian jurisprudence — can be read as a facet of the right to life under Article 21. The court noted that this right does not permit a criminal to obliterate history, but recognises that there are variant degrees of mistakes and that individuals should not be permanently profiled for the same.

The court also relied on the Delhi High Court’s judgment in SJ v. Union of India, 2023 SCC OnLine Del 3309, where a young person whose FIR had been quashed sought removal of digital content. The Delhi High Court had directed Google LLC to block access to the relevant judgment and directed Indian Kanoon to block the judgment from being accessed through search engines, balancing the right to access information against the petitioner’s career prospects, mental health and life prospects. That court had observed that the fulcrum of any society following the rule of law would be to reform a person and not condemn a person permanently.

The Karnataka High Court held that in light of the declaration of law by the Apex Court and the Delhi High Court, the petitioner in the present case was entitled to the relief sought.

Rejection of the “Floodgates” Argument

Justice Nagaprasanna was pointed in disposing of the respondents’ floodgates submission. The court characterised it as an argument of expediency rather than constitutional principle. Courts, the judgment observed, do not adjudicate rights by counting the number of those who may seek justice in the future. They adjudicate them by testing the legitimacy of the claim against the Constitution.

The court went further: if recognising such a right results in many more similarly placed citizens approaching constitutional courts seeking identical relief, “so be it.” The spectre of multiplicity of litigation can never be employed as a constitutional alibi to deny relief to one who demonstrably establishes an invasion of her fundamental rights. Constitutional guarantees are not to be rationed for fear that others may invoke them.

The argument that relief should be declined lest it encourage others was characterised as an argument in terrorem — one founded on fear of consequences rather than the command of constitutional values. In an age where digital search results frequently shape public perception, the continued visibility of an obsolete accusation inflicts a civil consequence far graver than the criminal proceedings themselves, the court held.

Outcome

The writ petition was allowed. The court issued a writ of mandamus to respondent Nos. 1 to 5 — the Registrar General of the High Court of Karnataka, the Registrar of the City Civil Court, the State of Karnataka through Hebbal Police Station, Google Inc., and Indian Kanoon — directing them to forthwith mask the name of the petitioner in the digital records pertaining to SC No. 547/2015 and Criminal Petition No. 1628/2014 connected with Criminal Petition Nos. 1637/2014 and 1979/2014.

The order added that if the respondents fail to comply, the petitioner is at liberty to initiate proceedings seeking to unleash the coercive arm of law.