Google wipes out stories about Asbo yob Sandeep Kumar under Right to be Forgotten ruling

Sandeep Kumar, then 14, was given an antisocial behaviour order in 2009 after magistrates were told how he waged a campaign of violence and intimidation against neighbours.

Under the Asbo, he was banned for three years from being outside between 7pm and 7am unsupervised, from half of Saunders Road, Cowley, and neighbouring Weymann Terrace, and from being abusive and threatening.

Three months later he was given an 18-month youth rehabilitation order and ordered to wear an electronic tag for three months at Oxford Magistrates’ Court after breaching the Asbo.

But anyone searching his name using Google will not get either story on his court appearances on oxfordtimes.co.uk in the results listed, after the search engine giant received an application under the European Court of Justice directive about the ‘Right to be Forgotten’.

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Last year, the ECJ ruled search engines should remove results from their listings if someone applies claiming a webpage – for instance a news story – carries information that is out of date or no longer relevant.

However, critics said the ruling would be abused by convicted criminals, celebrities and the powerful trying to stop the public finding out embarrassing information about them.

Google will not reveal if it was Kumar who made the application.

Oxford Mail and Oxford Times group editor Simon O’Neill said: “This is another case where quite clearly the misguided European Court of Justice ruling is being used to deny the public their right to know about criminal matters in our courts.“By hiding these results from search engines, it is effectively an attempt to re-write history.”

The ECJ ruling cannot force publishers, like the Oxford Mail and Oxford Times, to remove stories from their websites. It only affects search engine companies such as Google.

You can read the stories removed at http://ow.ly/Khzo6 and http://ow.ly/KhzAY