Introduction
The Delhi High Court’s judgment in Laksh Vir Singh Yadav v. Union of India & Connected Matters marks a significant development in India’s jurisprudence on the Right to Be Forgotten (“RTBF“). RTBF has emerged as one of the most debated issues that lies at the intersection of privacy, free expression and access to information. This judgment addresses a distinct challenge of the digital age- the enduring accessibility of personal information long after criminal proceedings have concluded, allegations have been disproved, or private disputes have attained finality- recognizing RTBF as an aspect of informational privacy under Article 21 of the Constitution.
The Court formulated a framework permitting the masking of personal identifiers in such court orders; restricting name-based discoverability across legal databases and search engines; and directing the de-indexing of masked judicial records and related reporting from name-based search results. While these directions aim to mitigate reputational harm, they also raise significant questions concerning principle of open justice, public records, journalist freedom, archival reporting, search neutrality and territorial limits of deindexing orders. This merits closer examination from the perspective of evolution of the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 (“DPDP Act“), the Digital Personal Data Protection Rules, 2025, with comparative jurisprudence under the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR“).
Indian Kanoon, a prominent legal database, has since appealed to the Division Bench of Delhi High Court, challenging the operational implementation of the Single Bench’s directions, a development that underscores the urgency of legally coherent RTBF framework under Indian law rather than one borrowed from European Union jurisprudence. The appeal is listed for hearing.
While a few other Courts have also passed interim orders on the issue of RTBF, the Supreme Court of India is also examining the issue in another petition filed by Indian Express against Nitin Bhatnagar, which is currently pending.
The DPDP Act and the Absence of a Statutory Right to Be Forgotten
Unlike Article 17 of the GDPR, the DPDP does not recognize an independent statutory right to be forgotten. The Court has invoked constitutional jurisdiction on the presumption of an existence of legislative vacuum for the provisions of RTBF under the DPDP Act- a notable provision of India’s data protection framework where the Parliament consciously elected not to enact a standalone statutory ‘Right to Be Forgotten’ which was part of the Justise B.N Srikrishna Committee report of 2018; subsequent personal data protections bills and recommendations by the Joint Parliamentary Committee report in Dec., 2021.
The judgement cites R. Rajagopal v. State of Tamil Nadu (1994) 6 SCC 632 (Para 26 (1)), but it also merits consideration alongside Para 26(2) where the Supreme Court observed that once information becomes part of public records, including court records, privacy protections are significantly diminished and such material becomes a legitimate subject of commentary and reporting, subject to limited exceptions.
Similarly, K.S. Puttaswamy v. Union of India, (2017) 10 SCC 1(Para 636), acknowledged international privacy interests, it also contemplated exceptions where retention and dissemination of information are necessary for freedom of expression, public interest functions, archiving, historical research or legal claims.
These limitations suggest that informational privacy was never intended to operate as an unrestricted constitutional claim against all public information.
Further, the Court has sought to differentiate between the appeal filed by Indian Kanoon vs Karthick Theodore pending before the Supreme Court of India and the judgement by the Kerala High Court in Vysakh K.G. Vs Union of India based on the issue of masking, deindexing or the complete removal of court order. However, the underlying reliefs sought in these petitions are under the doctrine of RTBF.
Right to Erasure (“Right to be Forgotten”) Under European Union GDPR and India’s DPDP Act
Article 17 of the GDPR provides the right to erasure of personal data, when the same is no longer necessary; or where the consent has been withdrawn; or there are no legitimate grounds for processing the data. However, the provisions under Article 17(3) are qualified by broad protection for exercising the right of freedom of expression and information; public interest activities or official functions; or for archiving purposes in the public interest, scientific or historical research purposes or statistical purposes in accordance with Article 89(1) of GDPR.
The DPDP Act, 2023 adopts a more limited approach. Section 12 provides rights relating to correction, completion, updating, and erasure of consent based personal data. Section 17(1)(b), read with Rule 16 of DPDP Rules, creates extensive exemptions for judicial functions; research, archiving, or statistical purposes. However, the right is neither absolute nor equivalent to the European right to erasure.
The statutory architecture therefore suggests that Parliament sought to preserve competing values for such public interests, including judicial transparency, historical record keeping, and public access to information. Hence, should the decision focus on the existing laws with the aforesaid background to identify if there was indeed any legislative vacuum, rather than treating GDPR as persuasive precedent for a right it has taken the European Union over a decade to calibrate?
Court Orders as Public Records
Judicial records perform a unique constitutional function- Courts do not merely process personal information; they generate authoritative public records that form part of the administration of justice and serve as precedential value. The principle of open justice requires that judicial records exist, maintained, and the decision remains publicly accessible for public interest and legitimate purposes, subject only to narrowly tailored exceptions.
Section 17(1)(b) of the DPDP Act, provides an exemption for processing of personal data by any court or tribunal or any other body in India, which is entrusted by law, and reinforce the special character of judicial processing, removing it from the “consent centric” architecture under the DPDP Act.
Indian law recognizes masking or anonymity in limited statutory circumstances, such as protection of victims of sexual offences under Section 72 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023, the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, 2012 and the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2015 and participants in certain non-open court proceedings. Within this framework masking or anonymization rather than deletion, represents a proportionate remedy as it preserves precedential value, and public access while protecting individuals from unnecessary reputational harm, in exceptional circumstances.
Source-level anonymization provides a sustainable solution. Once a judicial record is appropriately anonymized at its origin, downstream legal database and search engines organically reflect that modifications without a requirement for repeated individual takedown interventions, while preserving public access to judicial records via all mediums, in the public interest which is an important component of transparency in the administration of justice, as recognized by the Supreme Court.
The Missing Dimension – the Deletion of Journalistic Exemptions- Legislative View
The associated news reports and archives based on any developments in court proceedings serve fundamentally different constitutional functions. While judicial records constitute official state documents, news reports and legal research are contemporaneous accounts of events, prepared in exercise of freedoms protected by Article 19(1)(a).
The news report is not based on the data principal “consent centric” architecture under the DPDP Act. A report concerning an arrest, investigation, or prosecution may have been entirely accurate and lawful at the time of publication. The subsequent acquittal or closure of proceedings does not retroactively render the original facts misleading or irrelevant. The real concern is often the absence of contextual updates rather than the existence of historical reporting itself. Rule 16 of the DPDP Rules provides an exemption from act for research, archiving or statistical purposes.
The judgment, however, appears to have directed de-indexing of the relevant content and associated reportage without fully engaging with the distinct constitutional values implicated in journalistic speech. The Supreme Court has earlier held that once information forms part of public records including court records, the right to privacy no longer subsists in respect of such information, and such records become legitimate subjects of publication and comment.
This omission of the journalist exemption becomes particularly significant as earlier drafts of India’s data protection legislation contemplated explicit protections for journalistic activities, which were ultimately omitted from the enacted DPDP Act. Journalistic organizations repeatedly highlighted this omission and the record demonstrates that concerns regarding journalistic freedom were explicitly raised before the Government. However, the final text of the DPDP Act provides “Certain Legitimate” rights under Section 7 of the DPDP Act. It contains no independent mechanism requiring balancing between data protection rights and journalistic expression.
Without a statutory balancing test between privacy and the press, judicial orders may result in “inadvertent censorship.” De-indexing fair reporting on criminal proceedings, especially when updated with acquittal facts, suppresses historical and archival truth. If de-indexing orders are applied broadly to archival news, they risk erasing the public history necessary for a transparent democracy.
Name-Based Search Restrictions and the Risk of Inadvertent Censorship
The more difficult policy question arises from the Court’s direction requiring legal databases, including Indian Kanoon, to restrict name-based search functionality in relation to affected records.
Search tools do not ordinarily create or alter content; rather, they facilitate discovery of information already lawfully available in the public domain. Restricting searchability may therefore have consequences extending beyond the specific privacy interest sought to be protected.
A name is often the principal means through which citizens, researchers, journalists, employers, investors, and litigants identify information relevant to legitimate decision-making. Blanket restrictions on name-based searchability may inadvertently suppress access to legitimate information, including other judicial proceedings, regulatory actions, or matters of continuing public significance involving the same individual.
A narrower approach directed at specific URLs of the specific unredacted records may better reconcile privacy interests while minimizing collateral effects on public access and freedom of information.
Different Platforms Role: For Intermediaries, Publishers, and Legal Database: Deindexing and Masking
This judgment has tried to differentiate the nature of different platforms for maintaining judicial records, i.e. court’s internal records; online legal database and search engines, that index or surface judicial records. The court has further sought to differentiate the relief of de-indexing from the relief of masking, i.e. de-indexing operates at the level of the search engine or legal database platform, whereas masking operates at the level of the court records itself.
While the court requires the unredacted version of the court orders to remain available for internal records; the legal database such as Indian Kanoon are required to restrict name-based search functionality within its platform in respect of the records of the petitioners; the search engines are directed to de-index the masked judgment from name-based search results from all platforms and domains.
The court has also set out three-pronged tests, including outcome of concluded proceedings; accuracy & continuing relevance; and the public role of the individual and held that the public officials/figures have no privacy as to acts in their public capacity; that interest does not fade with time. The principle does not extend to the private life of a public figure.
The court relied on Rule 3(1)(d) of the IT Rules, 2021, to compel search engines to de-index “masked judgments,” this approach curtails the right to access legitimate information and is against the public interest. An action by the “publisher/author/originator” on the “source website” is generally considered more appropriate to ensure the information is updated from the source and accordingly does not reappear through automated re-indexing. Directing an intermediary to de-index a masked record is not proportionate; if the source is masked, the search results will be updated organically. Blanket bans on “masked judgments” via de-indexing orders will curtail legitimate interest once the underlying harm i.e. the identification of the individual is duly addressed at the source.
Global De-Indexing and the Limits of Territorial Jurisdiction
The judgment’s endorsement of global de-indexing raises perhaps the most significant policy concern. European courts have generally resisted requiring worldwide removal of lawful information, preferring to limit privacy remedies to the territorial scope of relevant legal rights.
Against that background, global de-indexing risks extending domestic privacy norms beyond national borders and into jurisdictions that may prioritize freedom of expression differently. As a matter of public policy, territorial de-indexing may better respect principles of sovereignty, comity, and the diversity of global approaches to freedom of expression and information access.
Towards a More Balanced Framework
A more calibrated and balanced erasure framework may require a tiered approach. Hence, the key questions that are required to be examined include;
First, should the starting point for any erasure claim be examined under the existing framework under the DPDP Act and consider invoking the Constitutional doctrines only where the statutory framework is insufficient?
Second, should there be an explicit journalistic exemption under the DPDP framework?
Third, should the publishers update historical reports by adding context and subsequent developments, ensuring that archival material remains accurate and contextualized?
Fourth, is anonymization and pseudonymization preferable to provide less restrictive alternatives to deindexing as they address personal data harm without eliminating historical records?
Fifth, if publishers are not compelled to delete content, would any directions to search engines to de-index specific URLs amount to proportionate remedy or would the same be constituted as selective censorship?
Sixth, should de-indexing be targeted to specific records with specific URLs, rather than broader name-based search prohibitions that may suppress other legitimate and/or unrelated information?
Finally, should the records and reports be masked at source, consequentially the search results on search engines and intermediaries are updated organically, reducing the need for expansive restrictions on information discovery tools?
Conclusion
The Delhi High Court’s judgment in Laksh Vir Singh Yadav represents a significant decision in the privacy jurisprudence, while the data protection law in India is yet to be fully implemented. It reflects judicial sensitivity to the harm that may arise from perpetual digital accessibility of personal information, under certain circumstances. The views on masking and anonymization as a privacy-preserving mechanism offer a model for reconciling informational privacy with open justice.
At the same time, the judgment leaves unresolved questions concerning the treatment of public records, the constitutional role of journalism, the implications of restricting name-based access to court records or associated news reports or archives and the legitimacy of global de-indexing. These questions become particularly significant when viewed considering Section 17 of the DPDP Act, Rule 16 of the DPDP Rules, and the legislative choice not to enact a GDPR-style Right to Be Forgotten or an explicit journalistic exemption.
*Deepak Singh, Designation: Partner & Head Digital Regulations, Emerging Technology, Privacy & Cybersecurity, partner at Chandhiok & Mahajan
Email: deepak.singh@chandhiok.com
**Rishika Sharma, Associate, partner at Chandhiok & Mahajan
Email: sharma.rishika@chandhiok.com