No public interest in retaining personal details of man online in quashed case: Bombay High Court

The Bombay High Court has directed its registry to anonymise the name of an environment and climate change consultant in all digital court records in relation to a quashed criminal case [ABC v. State of Maharashtra & Ors.]

A Division Bench of Justices Urmila Joshi‑Phalke and Nivedita P Mehta reiterated that the right to privacy is a well‑established fundamental right under the Constitution.

The concept of right to privacy incorporates the right to be forgotten, the Court said.

It emphasised that while the access to information is a fundamental aspect of democracy, the same cannot be divorced from the need to balance public's right to information with the individual’s right to privacy.

"This is especially when after the quashing of the proceedings, no public interest can be served by keeping the information alive on the internet,” the Nagpur Bench of the High Court said.

The Court was dealing with a plea seeking a direction to the registrar general of the High Court to mask and anonymise a petitioner's name and personal identifiers in the online versions of orders passed in 2018.

The petitioner had earlier approached the Court with a plea seeking anticipatory bail in a criminal case. Subsequently, the Court quashed the 2017 FIR since the dispute between the parties was amicably settled.

However, unredacted district court records remained publicly accessible and indexed by search engines.

Consequently, the man again approached the Court with a present petition invoking his right to privacy and reputation, including the right to be forgotten.

The Court was told these details regularly surface during professional and educational background checks. The petitioner argued this “algorithmic permanence” was severely prejudicing his career progression, causing social stigma to his family and minor daughter. 

The Court allowed the petition and directed its registry to remove the petitioner’s names from its records and search results.

It further ordered that, in future, the petitioner’s name must not appear in the cause title, pleadings, citations, judgments or orders of these matters, and should instead be shown only as “ABC”.

Advocate SB Tiwari appeared for the petitioner. 

Additional public prosecutor VA Thakare appeared for the State and High Court registry.

[Read Order]