Supreme Court asks search engines to block sex determination websites

The Supreme Court on Monday directed search engines of companies, like Google India, Microsoft India and Yahoo India, to take steps to block sex determination advertisements in order ensure that female infanticide is not allowed to take place.

Passing this order on a petition from Sabu Mathew George, a bench of justices Dipak Misra and C. Nagappan said, “In our considered opinion, they are under obligation to see that the ‘doctrine of auto block’ is applied within a reasonable period of time. It is difficult to accept the submission that once it is brought to their notice, they will do the needful. It need not be over emphasised that it has to be an in-house procedure/method to be introduced by the companies, and we do direct.”

The bench rejected the arguments made on behalf of the websites that if anyone, taking recourse to any kind of ingenuity, feed certain words and something that is prohibited under the Act comes into existence, the “principle of auto block” shall be immediately applied, and it shall not be shown. They submitted that they can only do this when it is brought to their notice.

Counsel for the petitioner, Sanjay Parikh, opposed the submissions on behalf of the search engines and intermediaries and said expansive interpretation had to be placed under Section 22 of the PNDT Act and the websites should be made responsible for the advertisements popping up on use of certain key words.

Solicitor-General Ranjit Kumar also said that it was the responsibility of the service providers to take steps to block the websites. The bench directed the matter to be listed for final hearing on November 16, and asked the Centre to file a status report on the steps taken by it to block the websites.