India Supreme Court orders Wikipedia to remove name and photo of victim in Kolkata rape-murder case
The Supreme Court of India ordered Wikipedia on Tuesday to delete name and picture of the rape and murder victim of RG Kar Medical College Hospital. The suo motu case was heard by a bench comprising of the Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud and Justices JB Pardiwala and Manoj Misra.
The court had earlier given a clear directive on August 20, 2024, to dismantle all posts on the victim’s name and photos or any other form of social and electronic media. “We therefore order that any matter that relate to the name of the deceased victim and the photographs in the incident should be withdrawn from all the social media platforms including the electronic media in compliance with this order,”; the bench said in the August Order.
The bench repeated what it has said and added that this rule applies to all the platforms, being Wikipedia as well. In the interest of right to dignity of the deceased the rule is absolutely clear that the identity of the victim in rape and murder shall not be disclosed In the course of hearing it was observed that even Wikipedia depicted an art work related to the concerned case. Although the image was not the real photograph of the victim, the court directed that the picture should be withdrawn to avert a wrong impression being created.
The court had also previously drawn the attention to the guidelines made in the Nipun Saxena v. Union of India case relating to the non-disclosure of the identity of rape victims including deceased victims except by the permission of a competent authority in exceptional circumstances.
The Suo Moto hearing also covered other aspects of the case as stated hereabove. Another point that was discussed was the status report of the investigation that was carried by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). The findings of the said report were not disclosed but the CJI noted that the contents are ‘shocking’. The court also looked down upon a recently issued state notification by the government of west bengal. According to the notification, the female doctors should not work at night because they are likely to be attacked. The CJI said such restrictions are when made under the guise of protection are unlawful and unconstitutional.
Thus, this case having received a lot of attention of the general public, remains rather developing, the CBI being actively working on the crime.
