Mask names of those acquitted in criminal cases from digital records, HC tells media
“The Fourth Estate [the media] should consider masking, delisting and deleting the names of persons acquitted from criminal cases from their respective online digital records, and not drive such people to courts to seek directions for deletion of their names,” the Karnataka High Court has said.
Justice M. Nagaprasanna made these observations while directing the High Court’s registry to mask the name and other perso
nal details of a 27yearold petitioner, who was given a clean chit in a criminal case, from the court’s digital records to honour his right to live with dignity.
In any crime, the court said, “once the accused gets acquitted honourably, or discharged by a competent court of law, or the High Court quashes criminal proceedings in exercise of its power under Section 482 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, and such orders become final, the shadow of crime, if permitted to continue in place of shadow of dignity, on any citizen, would be travesty of the concept of life under Article 21 of the Constitution of India. The direction would be only to enable the internet forget, like the humans forget. If it is allowed to stay on record, the internet will never permit the humans to forget,” Justice Nagaprasanna said.
Pointing out that the Personal Data Protection Act, notified on August 11, 2023, which will come into force from the date of publication in the official gazette, also recognises the right of erasure of personal data, the court said that evolving laws across the globe are moving towards the right to be forgotten, and right of correction and erasure.