In 2008, Sabu Mathew George, an activist, filed a writ petition in the Supreme Court, requesting the court to ban advertisements relating to pre-natal sex determination from Google, Yahoo and Microsoft’s search engines. As per the petitioner, the advertisements were violative of section 22 of the Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques (Regulation and Prevention of Misuse Act), 1994 [“the PNDT Act”]. Between 2014-15, the Supreme Court directed the respondent search engines to block such advertisements. Subsequently, on 19 September 2016, the Court ordered these search engines to develop a “technique so that the moment any advertisement or search is introduced into the system, that will not be projected or seen by adopting the method of auto-block.”

By expecting intermediaries to proactively remove illegal content even without a takedown notice issued either by the court or by a government agency, the judgement in Sabu Mathew George directly contravened the precedent laid down in Shreya Singhal (see: Competent Authorities). Additionally, the technology suggested by the court, of auto-blocking search results based on a list of keywords, is flawed.