New Delhi: Delhi High Court has directed its registry and district courts to mask a sexual assault survivor’s identity from past judicial orders, holding that “the protection against disclosure attaches to the allegation itself, irrespective of whether the accused was summoned for the offence”.It also said search engines and third-party portals must mask such identifiers when approached by the survivor, observing that disclosure serves “no public interest” and only leads to “social victimisation” and ostracisation.“No public interest is served by such disclosure, which only results in the very victimisation that Section 228A of IPC seeks to prevent,” Justice Amit Mahajan noted, directing search engines and intermediaries to follow the statutory mandate and mask the identifying material when approached by the petitioner.Distinguishing a survivor’s right to anonymity from an accused person’s plea to erase records, the court said the petitioner was “not an accused seeking to be forgotten”.It held that Section 228A of IPC, now Section 72 of Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, prohibits disclosure of the identity of anyone against whom a sexual offence is “alleged or found to have been committed”, dismissing the contention raised by respondents that the accused were not summoned for the offence of rape under Section 376 of IPC. “The protection attaches to the allegation itself,” the court pointed out.The petitioner had filed a criminal complaint on Feb 17, 2007, alleging offences, including rape under Section 376 IPC. A metropolitan magistrate declined to summon the accused for rape in 2011, issuing summons only under Section 323 (voluntarily causing hurt) IPC. Her revision petition was dismissed by an additional sessions judge in 2013, followed by the dismissal of her petition before the high court in 2016.The orders passed during these proceedings carried her full name, parentage and residential address and were published on court websites and third-party legal portals. She told the court that the accused circulated copies among her neighbours, subjecting her to “daily taunts, physical violence and social ostracism”.Referring to precedents prohibiting such exposure, Justice Mahajan reiterated that identity protection extended beyond withholding a survivor’s name to preventing disclosure of any material through which her identity became “discernible”. It also recalled the prohibition on publishing identifying details and placing FIRs relating to rape and Pocso offences in the public domain.
