Actor and reality TV show star, the winner of Roadies (2007) and Bigg Boss Season 2 (2008) Ashutosh Kaushik is seeking the ‘Right to be forgotten’ at the Delhi High Court. Right to be forgotten means the right to have your publicly available personal information removed from the internet.
Kaushik was arrested in the summer of 2009 for riding a motorbike under the influence of alcohol. He was found guilty, fined, sentenced to one day in jail, and his license was suspended. In 2020, he approached the court asking for the incident to be expunged from the internet under the right to be forgotten.
‘I have to consistently remind my mother to read the date of publication in a news article every time my relatives or a friend forwards them to her, explaining that I was arrested years ago for a crime I served punishment for,’ Ashutosh told Asian Voice over a telephone interview.
‘I was very young when I saw success, and I accept that I made a mistake back then, but I have served the punishment, and now, I even go to schools and organisations to explain the repercussions of drinking and driving. I’m not that man anymore,” he added.
Ashutosh seeks the ‘Right to be forgotten’ such that all the coverage around his drink and drive case can be taken off the internet, in order for him and his family, especially his future kids to have a respectable public life. Like any other respected and law-abiding citizen, he too wants to be able to move forward in life without constantly being subjected to humiliation for a mistake he made as a young man.
A Google spokesperson told the BBC that their search "generally reflects what's on the web, so if people want content removed from the web, we ask that they start by contacting the independent sites hosting the content".
"Our goal has always been to support the greatest access to information possible... We work hard to provide systems that enable users to flag content that violates our policies, this includes removing unlawful content under applicable domestic laws," he added.
Adding to his misery, the reports of his case made Ashutosh’s life so difficult that he struggled to find a suitable life partner, until he went to a bank to take a loan, and ended up marrying the woman who was a banker. Ashutosh told the newsweekly that he in fact had serious resistance from his wife’s family while they were getting married because everyone read old reports about him and didn’t think he was a half-decent man, good enough to be married.
However, his wife stood by him and they’re happily married. Ashutosh married his wife Arpita during the lockdown of 2020. Since that incident, Ashutosh has not only tried to advocate sober behaviour but also contributed to the education of his siblings, including his sister who is a nutritionist in London.
He runs two Dhabas in his hometown Saharanpur, and a cloth showroom in Uttarakhand. From time to time he does some videos and content with newsrooms in Noida, and Ashutosh now also runs his own YouTube channel.
Speaking to us, Ashutosh also added that due to this information on the internet, he has had trouble finding work, but he continues to seek roles in TV and films. While this doesn’t affect his livelihood and is not his bread and butter, he also believes that one doesn’t need to live in Mumbai to be able to survive in the industry. ‘I will go if they call me for work, and finish it and come back to my hometown,’ he said.
