Don’t sponsor links on sex selection: SC to Google, others

R Sedhuraman

Legal Correspondent

New Delhi, January 28

The Supreme Court today directed Google, Yahoo and Microsoft not to sponsor or facilitate access to advertisements on availability of medical facilities for female foeticide as part of efforts to check the falling ratio of girl children in the country.

A Bench headed by Justice Dipak Misra told the three multinational companies operating search engines, which enabled access to information on the Internet, that they were bound by the Pre-Conception and Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques (PCPNDT) Act, 1994, which prohibited publication of such advertisements and facilities. The Bench directed them to publish the court order on the pages of their policies and terms of service. The apex court passed the order while hearing a PIL by SM George pleading for blocking of such contents.

Appearing for Google, senior advocate Shyam Divan said his client had already blocked access, though some such content was still available due to anti-filtering devices used by those hosting such information. He pleaded against any court order for blocking searches through the use of generic words as this would deny access to all information, be it of SC judgments or PM’s speeches, containing words such as sex ratio, female foeticide and in vitro fertilisation.