BENGALURU: The Karnataka High Court observed that the Fourth Estate (media) should consider masking, delisting and deleting names of accused or victims from their respective digital records and not drive them to court seeking for deletion.
The court’s observation came after it directed the Registrar General to mask the name of the petitioner in the digital records of the court as he has been discharged from the crime following the ‘B’ report (closure report) filed by the police.
The court, however, made it clear that the mere erasure of the name of the petitioner in the cause title of the criminal petition in the digital records of the court does not mean that he is entitled to seek such erasure from the police records.
“The direction would be only to enable the internet to forget... If it is allowed to stay on record, the internet will never permit humans to forget,” said Justice M Nagaprasanna while allowing the petition seeking directions to the Registry of the High Court to remove the petitioner’s name from digital records. The petitioner contended that if his name is searched on any search engine, it reveals him to be an accused and because of this, he and his brothers did not get any jobs.
In a plethora of cases, the court comes about issues where crimes are registered without any rhyme or reason resulting in quashing of those proceedings under Section 482 of the CrPC, sometimes on the sole basis that it was frivolous or an act of vengeance, inter alia, the court said. If the accused is acquitted or discharged or quashed of those crimes by the court and those orders become final, he cannot be seen to be carrying the stigma of being accused for all his life.
If the shadow of crime is permitted to continue in place of the shadow of dignity on any citizen, it would be a travesty of the concept of life under Article 21 of the Constitution, the court said adding that the Digital Personal Data Protection Act 2023 recognises both the right to forget, correction and erasure.