Karnataka high court orders masking of acquitted Iranian woman's name online

The Karnataka High Court has ordered authorities to mask the name of an acquitted Iranian woman from all online records, seven years after she was cleared of criminal charges. Justice M Nagaprasanna issued the direction to court registries, Hebbal police, Google India, and Indian Kanoon. The woman was accused no. 3 in a 2014 case involving trafficking and obscenity charges, with a chargesheet filed in 2015. She was acquitted on March 28, 2019, and later granted refugee status by the UN, now living in Stockholm, Sweden. The court held that a final acquittal carries an "imprimatur of innocence" that must be reflected digitally, citing Article 21's right to dignity. It stated that allowing obsolete records to resurrect allegations would let technology defeat justice.