Acting on a petition filed by a 19-year-old engineering student who lost his mobile handset to theft more than two years ago, the Punjab and Haryana High Court has issued notice to Google India Private Limited. Among other things, the petitioner alleged that the company failed to act on a Grievance Appellate Committee order directing it to facilitate data recovery from his Gmail accounts.Justice Tribhuvan Dahiya also fixed November 20 as the next date of hearing on the petition filed by student Ashish Ranjan Mishra.In his petition, Mishra contended that the mobile handset was stolen at Dashmesh Market in Mohali’s Balongi area. The handset was the “sole two-step-verification trusted device for three interlinked accounts maintained with respondent-Google India, “all of which became simultaneously inaccessible”.Appearing before the Bench, the petitioner – among other things – contended “despite an order dated August 21, passed by the Grievance Appellate Committee, directing the respondent-Google India Private Limited, to provide appropriate guidance and support to the petitioner to facilitate the recovery of data from his Gmail accounts, no action has been taken”.It was added that the petitioner’s emails for the purpose, including the one dated September 9, remained unanswered. “A challenge has also been raised to the policy of the respondent, which requires it to preserve the data of the emails for a period of two years, on the ground that the same is stated to be in violation of the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023, which requires the intermediaries to preserve such data at least for a minimum period of three years,” the Bench noted, while referring to the petitioner’s contentions.It was added that the impending automated destruction of the petitioner’s personal digital data – “liable to occur at any moment upon the operation of the internal inactivity policy of the respondent” – violated his right to informational privacy guaranteed under Article 21 of the Constitution of India. “The right to privacy, of which informational privacy and the individual’s right to exercise control over his own personal data are facets, stands declared a fundamental right by the Supreme Court,” the petitioner added.His counsel added: “If the right to privacy under Article 21 confers upon an individual control over his personal data, and the ability to know what is being done with it and to correct and amend it, then it must follow that the individual is entitled to have that data preserved and, upon establishing his identity, to have it returned to him. If the right to control one’s personal data includes the right to compel its deletion, it must include the right to resist its deletion and to require its preservation”.He added the right could not operate in one direction only. “A right of control which does not include a right of retrieval is no control at all. The petitioner does not assert a novel right; he asserts the necessary content of a right already declared,” it was added.