CHENNAI, India — A local court in India ordered government officials and the Google subsidiary in the country to “prevent the appearance pf porn site suggestions” in its search engine.

The Madras High Court issued the notice as part of a public interest litigation, the Daily Thanthi reported.

The censorship request was made by Chennai-based lawyer  S. Gnaneswaran and heard by Chief Justice D. Krishnakumar and Justice P. B. Balaji.

Gnaneswaran claimed that whenever “a genuine-internet user types anything in Google’s search engine, it suggests some sites related to pornography or other obscene content,” which may lead to someone accidentally “opening the illegal sites without knowing the contents, and having to face embarrassment.”

Gnaneswaran’s censorship request also alleged that minors may “end up opening those sites due to curiosity, leading to a worst scenario to society.”

The local advocate asked the court “to direct the ministry of electronics and information technology to act upon his representation to prevent such porn sites suggestions in Google search engine.”

The judges issued a notice to the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology and to the local Google subsidiary, giving two weeks to submit a reply.

As XBIZ reported, India’s Hindu nationalist government led by Narendra Modhi has been conducting a War on Porn along the same lines as religious conservatives in the U.S.

Indian law has no legal protection for adult content and Modhi’s ministers have repeatedly geoblocked platforms and sites in the country, claiming they “promoted obscenity and vulgarity under the guise of ‘creative expression.’”

The Modhi government also enforces laws against the crime of “depicting nudity and sexual acts.”

Although many of India’s multiple cultures, including Hinduism, have openly depicted nudity and sexual acts for millennia, current conservative ideologues support the country’s extreme censorship laws against sexual expression. These attitudes originated in the 19th century with imported Victorian notions under the British Empire, which shamed Indians for their openness about sex.

Recent government and media reports in India have conflated both explicit and simulated sex under the crime of “obscenity.”

Main Image: Madras Chief Justice D. Krishnakumar