SC pulls up Google, Yahoo for hosting pre-natal sex determination sites

The Supreme Court on Tuesday slammed search engines Google, Microsoft and Yahoo for showing sex determination contents on its websites and called on the Centre to come up with a memorandum to stop the 'abuse'.

The Apex Court also directed the government to hold a meeting with the major search engines and petitioners in the case.

Asserting that the Centre must immediately come up with a memorandum in the matter, the Supreme Court will hear the matter again on July 25.

"Can these search engines continue to violate the law? Is there nothing that can be done to completely stop them? Google, Microsoft, Yahoo can't continue doing the illegal activity in the name of being an intermediary," the Apex Court observed today.

The PIL was filed by Sabu Mathew George, which sought court intervention to get the government to crack down on advertisement of sex-determination kits, tools and clinics on these sites.

The PIL has alleged, sex-determination ads and links were freely available on the search engines, defeating the very purpose of the law.