Bengaluru: Holding that an acquittal must be reflected not only in court records but also in the digital space, Karnataka high court has directed the authorities to mask the name of an Iranian woman from their online records, seven years after she was cleared of criminal charges.Justice M Nagaprasanna issued the direction to the registries of the high court and the civil court, Hebbal police, Google India Inc, and Indian Kanoon.The woman was arraigned as accused no. 3 in a 2014 case involving offences under the Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act, Foreigners Act, Information Technology Act, and provisions of Indian Penal Code relating to trafficking and obscenity. A chargesheet was filed in 2015.On March 28, 2019, the trial court acquitted her and the other accused. The acquittal attained finality.After her acquittal, the woman approached the United Nations for asylum and was granted refugee status. She is now living in Stockholm, Sweden, where she sought to rebuild her life.However, while browsing the internet, she found that her name continued to appear in online records as an accused in the criminal case, despite her acquittal. She then approached the high court seeking directions to remove or mask her name from digital records.Allowing the petition, Justice Nagaprasanna observed that a final acquittal carries the “imprimatur of innocence” and deserves the same recognition in the digital world as it does in a courtroom. “To permit obsolete digital records to perpetually resurrect allegations that have long been buried by a judgment of acquittal would amount to allowing technology to defeat justice and memory to triumph over judicial truth,” the judge observed.The court said the right to dignity under Article 21 of the Constitution extends beyond physical liberty and includes the right to live free from unwarranted stigma and humiliation. “The Constitution does not merely guarantee life — it guarantees a life worthy of living, a life free from unwarranted stigma, perpetual suspicion, and needless humiliation,” the judge observed.Once a competent court has declared a person innocent through a final judgment of acquittal, every repository of judicial information has a corresponding obligation to ensure that the vindication is not rendered meaningless by the permanent memory of the digital world, the court held while directing the authorities to forthwith mask the woman’s name in their online records.
