Case Removal and Redaction Policy

1. Why your case is on Rhett Precedent

Your case is on Rhett Precedent because the court or tribunal that decided it published the judgment or order on its own website. Rhett Precedent reproduces judgments from the official websites of the Supreme Court of India, the High Courts and tribunals, and makes them searchable. It is one of many copies: the court’s website, law reports, other legal databases and general search engines all carry the same document.

Rhett Precedent is operated by Foolscape Technologies Private Limited under the Rhett brand. This policy explains why we publish court records, the narrow circumstances in which we remove or redact them, and how to ask. It forms part of our Terms of Use.

2. Court records are public

Justice in India is administered in open court. Judgments are pronounced publicly, and courts themselves now publish them online. A judgment of the Supreme Court is the law of the land; the judgments of the High Courts and tribunals bind or guide the courts below them. Anyone may read them, and anyone may publish them.

No permission is needed to publish a court judgment. Section 52(1)(q)(iv) of the Copyright Act, 1957 provides that reproducing or publishing a judgment or order of a court, tribunal or other judicial authority is not an infringement of copyright, unless the court has prohibited it.

Publishing judgments is also an exercise of the freedom of speech and expression under Article 19(1)(a) of the Constitution, and open access to judgments is how the public, the profession and the courts themselves check what the law is.

3. Privacy and the right to be forgotten

In R. Rajagopal v. State of Tamil Nadu (1994) 6 SCC 632, the Supreme Court held that the right to privacy does not extend to matters that are part of public records, including court records, subject to an exception for the identity of victims of sexual offences and similar crimes.

In K.S. Puttaswamy v. Union of India (2017) 10 SCC 1, the Supreme Court recognised privacy as a fundamental right under Article 21, noted that any right to be forgotten would have to be balanced against the public’s right to information and worked out through data-protection legislation, and did not disturb Rajagopal on public records.

The Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023, by Section 3(c)(ii), does not apply to personal data that is publicly available because a person is under a legal obligation to make it so. Court judgments published by courts are such data.

High Courts have reached different conclusions on whether a person can require a legal database to remove or redact a judgment. The Gujarat High Court in Dharamraj Bhanushankar Dave v. State of Gujarat (2017) and a Division Bench of the Kerala High Court in Vysakh K.G. v. Union of India (2022) declined to recognise a general right to be forgotten against the publication of judgments, while allowing case-by-case relief in family and matrimonial matters. The Delhi High Court in Jorawar Singh Mundy v. Union of India (2021) and the Madras High Court in Karthick Theodore v. Registrar General (2024) granted relief to acquitted persons. The Supreme Court stayed the Madras High Court’s direction in Ikanoon Software Development Pvt. Ltd. v. Karthick Theodore, SLP (C) No. 15311 of 2024, and has reserved the question for decision.

Until the Supreme Court decides otherwise, we follow Rajagopal: public court records stay public, except where a competent court orders otherwise or a statute requires an identity to be withheld. We will update this policy when the Supreme Court rules.

4. What we will not do

We will not remove, hide or alter a judgment or order because a person named in it asks us to, however the request is framed. In particular, we do not remove or redact on the basis that:

• the case was dismissed, withdrawn, settled or compromised, or the person was acquitted or discharged;
• the matter is old, or the person has since changed career, migrated or reformed;
• the judgment is embarrassing, affects employment, immigration, marriage or reputation, or appears in search-engine results;
• the person’s lawyer, employer or family asks on their behalf; or
• a fee is offered.

We do not alter the text of any judgment. Where we redact under section 6, we replace the identifying words with a tag such as {Name redacted} so that the reader can see that a redaction was made. We never change the court’s record, which stays with the court.

Removing a judgment from Rhett Precedent does not remove it from the court’s website, from law reports, from other databases or from search-engine caches. We have no control over those.

5. What we will do: orders of a competent court

We comply with orders of a court competent to make them. If a court directs us, or directs publishers of judgments generally, to remove, redact or restrict a judgment or order, we do what the order says, within the time it sets or otherwise within 7 days of receiving a copy.

To rely on a court order, send us a copy of the order, the case number and court, and the link to the judgment on Rhett Precedent. We may verify the order against the court’s records before acting. An interim order is complied with for as long as it is in force; if it is vacated or the matter is finally decided against removal, we may restore the document.

We also give effect to a direction in the judgment itself. Where a court has ordered that a judgment not be published, or that it be published only in redacted form, we publish it as the court directed or not at all.

6. Mandatory redaction of victims and children

Some identities are protected by statute whether or not a court has ordered redaction. Where a court has inadvertently left such an identity in a published judgment, we redact it on request, and we may do so on our own initiative. In these cases we replace the name, address, age, parentage and any other identifying detail with tags such as {Name redacted}, {Address redacted} and {Age redacted}, leaving the rest of the judgment intact.

For victim redaction you need only tell us that you are the victim, or that you act for the victim, and give us the link. We do not ask for proof of the offence or of your identity beyond what is needed to send a reply. We will not redact the name of an accused or convicted person under this section; that requires a court order under section 5.

7. Search-engine de-indexing for family matters

For a limited class of cases we will, on request, stop general search engines from indexing the judgment page on Rhett Precedent. The judgment stays on Rhett Precedent and remains searchable here; it will no longer surface on Google, Bing or similar engines through a link to that page.

This is available for: divorce and judicial separation, restitution of conjugal rights, maintenance and alimony, child custody and guardianship, and adoption. It is available for High Court and tribunal decisions only. Supreme Court judgments are not de-indexed.

How it works: we add a noindex instruction to the judgment page and remove it from our sitemap. Search engines drop the page from their index on their own timetable, which can take days or weeks. Only the judgment page is de-indexed; a search-results page on Rhett Precedent that happens to list the case cannot be de-indexed, because search pages are not specific to any one case. If a search engine continues to show a cached or indirect link, there is nothing further we can do.

Requests are reviewed in batches every 2 to 3 weeks.

8. How to make a request

Email ask@rhett.legal with the subject line “Removal request” and include:

• The link to the judgment page on Rhett Precedent (the address begins https://rhett.legal/rhett-precedent/doc/). One request per judgment.
• Which of these you are relying on: a court order (section 5), mandatory redaction (section 6) or family-matter de-indexing (section 7).
• Your relationship to the case: party, victim, guardian, advocate on record, or other.
• For a court order: a copy of the order, with the court and case number.
• For redaction: the exact words to be redacted and where they appear.
• An email address at which we can reply.

We do not accept requests by phone, social media or through Rhett Workspace support, and we do not accept requests that do not identify a specific judgment page. Requests that do not fall within sections 5 to 7 will be declined with a short reason; we do not enter into correspondence about declined requests except through the grievance route in section 9.

9. How we decide, timelines and independence

Decisions are taken by Foolscape Technologies Private Limited under this policy alone. They are not influenced by whether the requester, or any party to the case, is or has been a client of Rhett, and the Rhett legal team is not consulted on them. There is no fee for any request, and no payment will change the outcome.

Redactions and removals made under this policy are applied to the judgment page, to search results, to Compass results and to every Vault in which the judgment was saved. We keep a record of each request and what we did with it, as the Privacy Policy describes.

If you believe we have applied this policy wrongly, write to the Grievance Officer, Foolscape Technologies Private Limited, ask@rhett.legal, quoting the original request. We will respond within 30 days. If you believe the law entitles you to more than this policy provides, the remedy is an order of a competent court, which we will comply with under section 5.

This policy was last updated on 4 November 2026 and will be revised when the Supreme Court decides Ikanoon Software Development Pvt. Ltd. v. Karthick Theodore or when the law otherwise changes.