The principle of open justice mandates that court proceedings and trials must be conducted in public view. In India, while not explicitly mentioned as a single article, it is derived from the right to access justice under Articles 14 and 21 of the Constitution, as well as statutory laws like Section 327 of the CrPC and Section 153-B of the CPC. It aims to ensure judicial transparency, though exceptions exist for sensitive cases (held ‘in camera’).

In the landmark Justice K.S. Puttaswamy v. Union of India case (2017), a nine-judge bench of the Supreme Court of India unanimously ruled that the right to privacy is a fundamental right under Article 21 (Right to Life and Personal Liberty) of the Constitution. The ruling explicitly identified ‘informational privacy’ (an individual’s control over their personal data) as a key facet of this right.

On May 29, 2026, the Delhi High Court (in a batch of petitions led by Laksh Vir Singh Yadav v. Union of India, authored by Justice Sachin Datta) held that the ‘right to be forgotten’ is a constitutionally protected aspect of Article 21. The Court established a framework for masking personal identifiers in judgments and de-indexing name-based internet search results for acquitted individuals or those in private civil disputes, balancing privacy with the principle of open justice.

In the pre-digital era, court records were physical documents stored in archives, creating a ‘practical obscurity’ where records were technically public but difficult to find. The internet changed this by making judgments instantly searchable from anywhere, transforming temporary public exposure into a permanent digital footprint.

The ‘Right to be Forgotten’ was established in Europe by the Court of Justice of the European Union in the landmark 2014 Google Spain case. It was later codified as the ‘Right to Erasure’ under Article 17 of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in 2018. It allows individuals to request the deletion or de-indexing of personal data from search engines if it is inaccurate, irrelevant, or no longer necessary, provided there is no overriding public interest.

Critics of the ‘right to be forgotten’ argue that removing information from search engines compromises the integrity of public records and rewrites history, violating the right to freedom of expression and access to information. In jurisdictions like the United States, the First Amendment strongly protects public court records, making the right to be forgotten highly controversial compared to Europe.

In India, while the Supreme Court recognized informational privacy under Article 21, the Right to be Forgotten is not explicitly codified as a standalone right. The Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Act, 2023 includes a ‘right to erasure’ (Section 12), but excludes data processed for legal duties or court judgments. Consequently, high courts have issued conflicting rulings on masking names or de-indexing judgments, creating legal uncertainty.

Common law refers to law made by judges through written decisions in court cases (precedents), which forms the basis of the Indian legal system. Statutory law, on the other hand, consists of written laws passed by a legislative body (like the Indian Parliament). While common law supports open justice through public judgments, the right to be forgotten typically requires statutory enactment to provide clear guidelines.

Search engines use automated crawlers to index web pages, including court judgments. When displaying search results, they generate “snippets”, small snippets of text showing the query term in context. In legal disputes, these name-based snippets can expose personal details (like accusations of crimes) on the search page itself, even if the user does not click the link to read the full judgment (which might contain an acquittal). This is why the Delhi High Court noted that simply updating official records does not prevent search engines from displaying damaging, out-of-context snippets.

Indian Kanoon is a free, widely-used search engine for Indian law. In 2024, a petition was filed in the Supreme Court concerning whether third-party database platforms like Indian Kanoon must remove court judgments to protect an individual’s “right to be forgotten” after acquittal. This led to intense debates over whether private registries can index public records and whether name-based searches on commercial search engines should be separated from search tools within specialized legal registries.