February,16,2017:
Direction issued to ensure deletion of web material relating to sex determination tests.
Warning that the declining no. of girl child was a “disastrous signal for mankind”, Apex Court on Thursday directed search engines – Google, Yahoo, Microsoft– to set up in-house expert bodies to ensure deletion of the materials which went against the Indian laws prohibiting pre-natal sex determination, expressing concern over the declining sex ratio.
However, the Supreme Court, assured the Indian arms of the multinational cyber giants that it wouldn't initiate any contempt proceedings against them since the idea was to make them "responsive" to local laws & concerns.
A bench comprising of Justice Dipak Misra & Justice R Banumathi said that in case of any doubt, the in-house expert bodies of these search engines may communicate with nodal agency appointed by the Centre for their guidance & necessary action.
The bench said that in-house expert body shall take steps if any words or even key words that are shown on internet & which have the potential to counter to the section 22 of Pre-Conception & Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques (PCPNDT) Act, 1994 shall be deleted forthwith.
The Section 22 of the PCPNDT Act deals with prohibition of advertisements relating to pre-natal determination of sex & punishments for contravention.
During the hearing, the Supreme Court pulled up the companies saying that they know how to make money but don't show respect to the Indian laws.
Google India said that it obeyed the Court’s directions.
The firm said in its statement, “We've always been compliant & are supportive of removing the paid content based on the terms linked to the gender selection tests. We've taken action to disable auto-complete predictions for relevant terms on our site & also show a warning that tells users that pre-natal gender screening is illegal in India.”
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