Plea invoking Right to be forgotten’ filed in Delhi HC by a doctor

New Delhi, Feb 25,2023:  Pertaining to his wrongful arrest in regard to an FIR against him in 1999, a doctor has filed a petition invoking the ‘Right to be forgotten’ in the Delhi High Court seeking removal of news and journal articles published on various online platforms.

Due to the unavailability of Justice Prathiba M. Singh, the matter was adjourned until March 15.

It was alleged that the petitioner, Ishwar Gilada, was allegedly involved in illegally procuring medicines from abroad and administering the same to HIV patients in India.

Gilada is the first person to raise the alarm against AIDS in India (1985) and to start India’s first AIDS Clinic (1986) at the government-run JJ Hospital, Mumbai.

The petitioner’s lawyer Rohit Anil Rathi stated that the articles are available online platform of the publishers, British Medical Journal, the Lancet, NCBI, and Indian Paediatrics, and can also be searched on Google despite Gilada has already been discharged in the FIR that was registered against him in 1999.

In the plea, Gilada has relied on a trial’s court order stating that “there is no evidence whatsoever of the petitioner having engaged in any illegality”.

On February 17, the court had asked petitioner for communicating with the online publishers through email along with the copy of this petition as an intimation to the said publishers about the filing of the present petition.

“If they — British Medical Journal, The Lancet, NCBI, and Indian Paediatrics– choose to join the proceedings on the next date of hearing, they are allowed,” the court had said.

‘Right to be Forgotten’ enables a person to silence the past events of his life that are no longer occurring. Thus it entitles individuals to have information, videos, or photographs about themselves deleted from certain internet records so that search engines cannot find them.