New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Thursday made it clear that it can’t curtail the right to seek information, knowledge and wisdom as long as the search of information on the internet does not violate sex determination law.
Giving this ruling a bench of Justices Dipak Misra, A.M. Khanwilkar and M.M. Shantanagou-der said, “ There is no need for anyone to infer that there is any right to curtail information, knowledge and wisdom, without violating the law which bars sex determination tests.”
The Bench passed this order on a batch of petitions filed by NGO Sabu George after hearing senior counsle Harish Salve, Abhishek Singhvi and K.V. Viswanathan, appearing for the search engines, counsel Sanjay Parikh for petitioner and Solicitor General Ranjit Kumar for the Centre.
Search engines Google, Microsoft and Yahoo said that they would not sponsor any advertisement on pre-natal sex determination tests. They said “if we find something objectionable we will inform the nodal officer and remove the contents if required.” The bench said that volumes of literature come within the internet and such data can’t be curtailed as long as the content does not defeat the obejects of the law.
