The Allahabad District Court ordered a criminal case against the Mountain View, Calif., company, Indian American chief executive officer Sundar Pichai and India head Rajan Anandan for including an image of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi among the “top 10 criminals in the world,” according to a Times of India report.
The complaint was filed by advocate Sushil Kumar Mishra. Mishra noted in the complaint that Modi’s image pops up among the results in a search of the top 10 criminals of the world. Additional District Judge Mahtab Ahmed July 18 issued a notice to Google.
In 2015, Google apologized for the misunderstanding, but Mishra went ahead with the complaint, bringing it to the Civil Lines police station in Allahabad. Additionally, Mishra had written to Google to take the image down but the request was ignored.
Instead, Google followed up with a statement, saying, “These results trouble us and are not reflective of the opinions of Google. Sometimes, the way images are described on the internet can yield surprising results to specific queries. We apologize for any confusion or misunderstanding this has caused. We’re continually working to improve our algorithms to prevent unexpected results like this.” Google added that results to the query “top 10 criminals in India” was due to a British daily which had an image of Modi and erroneous metadata. The next hearing is slated for Aug. 31.
