Right to Be Forgotten: Erase Old Court Cases From Google (Delhi HC 2026)

If an old court case still shows up when someone Googles your name, you can now ask to have it removed. On 29 May 2026, the Delhi High Court held that the right to be forgotten is part of your fundamental right to privacy under Article 21, and laid down India's first full framework to de-index, delink and mask stale judicial records online.

• What the right to be forgotten now means
• The three remedies: de-indexing, delinking and masking
• Real situations this judgment fixes
• Who can ask, and who cannot
• What the court weighs before granting relief
• How to actually request relief
• Right to be forgotten meets right to information
• Frequently asked questions

This Table of Contents collapses automatically on long pages — the page starts tidy and expands on click.

The case is Laksh Vir Singh Yadav v. Union of India & connected matters, neutral citation 2026:DHC:4891, decided by Justice Sachin Datta in a 144-page judgment on 29 May 2026. The court heard a batch of petitions from people whose lives were stuck to a search result: persons acquitted, discharged, parties to matrimonial disputes, people whose FIRs were quashed, and people whose names appeared in an order although they were never a real party.

The core holding is short and powerful. The right to be forgotten flows from informational privacy under Article 21 of the Constitution. The court built directly on K.S. Puttaswamy v. Union of India, (2017) 10 SCC 1, which made privacy a fundamental right, and on earlier High Court orders from Kerala (Vysakh K.G.) and Karnataka. No court had yet pulled these threads into one working framework. This judgment does.

Justice Datta framed the problem most readers feel directly: a digital record never fades. An acquittal that the law treats as final is, in practice, negated by a search engine that keeps the accusation on page one forever. The court called this a constitutional incongruity — the law says you are innocent, but the internet says otherwise, permanently.

The court was careful to separate three different things people loosely call “removal.” They do different jobs, and you may get one without the others.

The key reassurance: the judgment is never deleted. Courts, lawyers, and researchers can still read it. What changes is that your name stops being an unlimited retrieval key that anyone can type into Google.

To enforce this, the court issued concrete directions. Google LLC, Google Inc. and Google India must de-index the relevant content, orders and associated reportage from name-based results. Indian Kanoon (iKanoon Software Development Pvt. Ltd.) must restrict name-based search while keeping records reachable by case number, citation, court and date. The Ministry of Electronics and IT (MeitY) must ensure the intermediaries comply and file a compliance affidavit within four weeks.

This is not abstract. Here is who it helps, and which remedy fits.

The court did not make this a free pass. It drew a clear line.

Strong cases for relief — where the proceedings ended in your favour or were never about your conduct:

• Acquittal in a criminal case
• Discharge before trial
• A quashed FIR or quashed proceeding
• Matrimonial and other purely private disputes
• Settled or compounded matters
• Victims of sexual offences (whose identity the law already protects)
• People named incidentally though not parties

Where relief will generally not be granted — the court held that an overriding public interest keeps these records accessible:

• Conviction for offences against women or children
• Conviction for breach of public trust — corruption and offences by public servants, elected representatives, and others in fiduciary positions

Note the difference that resolves most confusion: a victim of a sexual offence can seek protection, but a person convicted of an offence against women or children cannot use this right to scrub the record. Continuing public access in those categories serves an overriding public interest.

The court refused to reduce this to a mechanical checklist. Relief is decided case by case, by balancing your privacy against the public interest in access. The considerations the court drew out include:

• The nature of the information — intimate private life versus public, professional conduct.
• The passage of time — whether the disclosure still serves any current purpose.
• Your public role — public officials and elected representatives face higher transparency.
• Continuing public interest — freedom of expression, accountability, and the archival or research value of the record.
• The impact on your dignity and autonomy — reputational harm weighed against public benefit.

The court recognised how search algorithms amplify a stale record far beyond its original reach. The stronger your acquittal, discharge or quashing, and the longer ago it was, the stronger your claim — but no single factor decides it.

Based on the framework in this judgment, the route works like this. State practice will settle as it is applied, so verify the current procedure with your counsel or the relevant High Court registry.

1. Identify what is hurting you. The exact URL on Google, the Indian Kanoon page, the case number and the court that passed the order.
2. File a writ petition under Article 226 before the High Court, seeking de-indexing and delinking, and explain your situation against the factors above.
3. Seek masking from the originating court. For masking of the public copy, you can apply to the registry of the court that passed the original order, typically after de-indexing relief.
4. Name the intermediaries. Implead Google and, where relevant, Indian Kanoon, so the order binds the platforms that must act.
5. Keep proof of harm. Screenshots of the search results, rejected job offers, loan or visa flags — the dignity and impact factors turn on evidence.

If you have never filed anything before a court, start by understanding the public-record problem, then take legal advice. Our RTI Assistant can help you draft information requests to find out exactly what a public authority holds about your case.

There is a real tension here, and the court answered it elegantly. Open justice and the Right to Information demand that judgments stay public — that is how citizens hold courts and the State accountable. The right to be forgotten seems to pull the other way. But masking is the bridge: it removes only your name and identifiers, while the reasoning, the law laid down and the outcome stay fully public. Transparency about how courts decide is preserved; privacy about who you are is restored. This is the same balancing act that runs through RTI itself — see how the privacy-versus-disclosure line is being redrawn in DPDP Act vs RTI conflicts and the Delhi HC PhD theses ruling.

No. The judgment is preserved in full in the court's records and remains accessible by case number, citation, court and date. De-indexing only stops it from appearing in name-based Google searches. Masking only hides your name in the public copy, not the legal reasoning.

Yes — acquittal is one of the strongest cases under this judgment. The court treated a final acquittal that is “negated by permanent digital searchability” as a constitutional incongruity. You can seek de-indexing from Google and masking of your name in the order.

Usually not. The court treated an overriding public interest as keeping those records accessible — convictions for offences against women or children, and convictions for corruption or breach of public trust by public servants and elected representatives. Other situations are balanced case by case on the factors above.

The directions bind the parties before the Delhi High Court, including Google and Indian Kanoon, which operate nationally. As the first comprehensive framework, it is highly persuasive for other High Courts, but the procedure may vary by court until it is widely adopted.

You can apply to the registry of the court that passed the original order, generally after obtaining de-indexing relief through a writ petition under Article 226. Verify the exact mechanism with that court, as practice is still settling.

The judgment governs de-indexing of judicial records and associated reportage from name-based searches in approved cases. It does not erase history or bar all reporting; it limits the permanent, name-keyed retrieval of stale records where continued access serves no legitimate public interest.

This is a court remedy, not an RTI application, so normal court and lawyer costs apply rather than the small RTI fee. Filing the underlying RTI to discover what records exist about you is governed by the usual RTI fee rules.

• Laksh Vir Singh Yadav v. Union of India & connected matters, 2026:DHC:4891, Delhi High Court, 29 May 2026 (Justice Sachin Datta).
• LiveLaw — Delhi HC recognises right to be forgotten.
• Verdictum — Right to be forgotten facet of privacy under Article 21.
• Bar & Bench — Guidelines for masking personal details in court orders.
• K.S. Puttaswamy v. Union of India, (2017) 10 SCC 1.

• DPDP Act vs RTI conflicts: the 2026 legal landscape
• Delhi HC PhD theses RTI ruling explained
• K.S. Puttaswamy: the right to privacy judgment
• RTI Assistant — draft applications and appeals free
• The RTI Playbook