New Delhi: Warning that the declining number of girl child was a “disastrous signal for mankind”, Supreme Court on Thursday directed search engines — Google, Yahoo and Microsoft — to set up in-house expert bodies “forthwith” to ensure deletion of materials which went against Indian laws prohibiting pre-natal sex determination.
Expressing concern over the declining sex ratio, the apex court, however, assured the Indian arms of the multinational cyber giants that it would not initiate any contempt proceedings against them as the idea was to make them “responsive” to the local laws and concerns.
A bench of Justices Dipak Misra and R Banumathi said in case of any doubt, the in-house expert bodies of these firms may communicate with the nodal agency appointed by the Centre for guidance and necessary action.
Google India said it obeyed the court’s directions. “We have always been compliant and are supportive of removing paid content based on terms linked to gender selection tests. We have taken additional action to disable auto-complete predictions for relevant terms on our site and show a warning that tells users (that) pre-natal gender screening or testing is illegal in India,” the firm said in its statement. —PTI
