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An Indian court has issued a notice to Google, its CEO and India head for listing Prime Minister Narendra Modi among the world's top ten criminals in its image search results and registered a criminal case against the company.

The complainant, an advocate named Sushl Kumar Mishra, has argued that a Google search for the "top ten criminals of the world" showed Modi's photograph in the search results. Mishra has said that while he wrote to Google to remove Modi's name from the list, he got no response.

Social media users had first discovered that Modi featured in the image search results for "top 10 criminals" along with US President George Bush and Libya's Muammar Gaddafi in 2015. The list also included other Indians like Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal, underworld don Dawood Ibrahim and Bollywood actor Sanjay Dutt. 

After an uproar, Google issued an apology for causing "any confusion or misunderstanding" and clarified that the results were "not reflective of the opinions of Google".

"Sometimes, the way images are described on the internet can yield surprising results to specific queries... We're continually working to improve our algorithms to prevent unexpected results like this," Google had said in a statement. 

The company had explained that the results were due to the British daily using an image of Modi with erroneous metadata and that the news articles did not actually link Modi to criminal activity.

Mashable has reached out to Google for comments.

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