Gujarat High Court:A petition was filed under Article 226 of the Constitution praying to obtain a suitable writ for restraining the free public exhibition of the judgments and orders of the Court over internet by Google even if the cases are non-reportable. He pleaded that because of publication by the respondents the judgment is exhibited for free in public domain and is therefore, against the classification made by the Court.
It was also alleged that such an overzealous act of respondents is not just undisciplined and without authority, but also has had an adverse impact on personal and professional life of petitioner. The petitioner was accused in the impugned case that was published. Counsel for respondents simply pleaded that it was neither a proper nor a necessary party in the case as Google, being an automated search engine uses software known as ‘crawlers’ which would crawl the internet and find sites to add to its index and therefore, they were in no way connected to the publication on internet.
The Court observed that there are no specific provisions pointed out by the petitioner which have been violated by publication of the impugned judgment and as prayed by petitioner, it would not be covered under the ambit of Article 21 of the Constitution. It was clarified by the Court that reportable or non-reportable is the classification made for the reporting of a judgment in law-reporter and not its publication anywhere else while taking into consideration the important fact that High Court was a court of record. [Dharamraj Bhanushankar Dave v. State of Gujarat, 2015 SCC OnLine Guj 2019, decided on 19-01-2017]
