Court issues notice to Centre, Google on plea citing ‘right to be forgotten’
The Delhi High Court on Wednesday sought response of the Centre, Google and India Law on a plea seeking quashing of a judgment and an order in relation to a seven-year-old FIR under ‘Right to be forgotten’ and asked how far are the rules. can be extended.
Justice Rekha Palli issued notice asking them to respond to the petition, listing the matter for further proceedings on December 1, when several similar petitions have also been fixed for hearing.
The court orally said that the ‘right to be forgotten’ depends on how far it is to be extended. “Tomorrow, people who cheated the banks will come and say ‘please remove the judgment’. We have to balance the rights,” it said.
The court was hearing a petition named Sukhmeet Singh Anand seeking quashing of a judgment and an order passed in 2015 and 2018 in relation to the FIR lodged against him in 2014 by the Economic Offenses Wing.
According to a complaint filed by Samsung Gulf Electronic FZE, Dubai in 2014, an FIR was registered against the petitioner and other persons.
The petition, filed through advocate Tarun Rana, states that by simply typing Mr Singh’s name on Google, the web page takes the visitors to the direct link of the orders.
In August 2018, the petitioner had challenged the non-bailable warrant issued against him and the petition was dismissed by the High Court. Following this, he filed another petition seeking a direction to the High Court Registry to restrain the search engine from assessing the orders in the case, which was also dismissed in May 2019.
The petition had referred to an interim order passed by the High Court in April this year, which had directed the removal of the judgment from the search results in respect of the petitioner in that case.
It said that the petitioner has sent a notice to Kanoon Software Pvt Ltd. Ltd. to withdraw orders from your system; However, it refused to remove the orders on the pretext of website policy.
The petitioner also sent notices to the Center and Google to take necessary steps to remove the two orders from being viewed through the web portal. Google also showed its inability to do anything in this regard.
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