NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Wednesday agreed and decided to examine an important issue in connection with the right to be forgotten of an accused who sought removal of his name from the judgments from the public domain, after his acquittal in a rape case.
Although, a three-judge bench of the top court, led by the Chief Justice D Y Chandrachud, initially, said that the removal of accused's name from orders/ verdicts could have "serious ramifications," but decided to examine it later on a plea filed by a man, initially accused, but finally acquitted in a rape case.
The other two judges in the bench were Justices J B Pardiwala and Manoj Misra. "The judgments are part of public records and the orders for their removal by the courts will have serious ramifications," the top court said, while staying an earlier verdict of the Madras High Court that had asked a law portal / legal database website "Indian Kanoon" to remove from its website the verdict that had acquitted the man in a rape case.
It is pertinent to note here that the right to be forgotten is widely argued by various petitioners in the top court to be a part of the right to privacy (RTP) under Article 21, as the RTP was being held as one of India's landmark verdicts of K.S. Puttaswamy against Centre.
The Madras HC, in its order observed that though the courts were expected to preserve data as a court of record, but at the same time, it was also required to strike a balance between the collection of such data for records and the protection of a person's personal data.
The right to be forgotten is that where it ensures that the information about a person be removed from internet searches and other directories in some circumstances. The right entitles a person to have data about them deleted so that it can no longer be discovered by third parties, particularly through search engines.