Privacy Is Privacy; Even Spouse Cannot Violate It, Says Madras High Court

Madurai Bench of Madras High Court dismisses call record of wife surreptitiously obtained by husband as evidence in support of his claim for divorce.

Husbands are not entitled to snoop into their wife’s personal communications, whether it be phone, letters or diary. In fact, it is illegal. The Madras High Court has reiterated the fundamental right to privacy of a spouse in an order on Monday.

The order came on a divorce case that came up in the Madurai Bench of the High Court. A man who had submitted a plea for divorce in 2019 in a sub-court had submitted the wife’s call records as evidence in support of his allegations of cruelty, adultery and desertion. When the sub-court dismissed the wife’s plea to reject the call records as evidence, she approached the High Court.

The Madurai bench of the Madras High Court first looked into the way the husband had obtained the call records. He had downloaded the same from the website of the telecom company after entering the OTP number received on the wife’s phone. In this case, the court observed that the husband had the custody of wife’s phone and thus he accessed the CDR from the website. However, the downloaded copy of the CDR did not comply with the requirements stipulated in Section 65B(4) of the Indian Evidence Act, 1872. According to the Act, the certificate has to be signed by a person authorised by the telecom company concerned.

The High Court went on to observe that the subordinate court should not have accepted this as evidence “primarily because there has been a clear invasion of the privacy right of the wife”. “It is obvious that the husband had stealthily obtained the information pertaining to the call history of his wife. He was not the owner of the mobile device or the registered user of the SIM card. He had clandestine custody of the same for probably a brief while. There has been a clear breach of the privacy of the wife,” stated Justice G R Swaminathan, the Judge of the Madurai bench of the Madras High Court. The court further stated that each spouse is entitled to a separate life, distinct from the shared matrimonial life.

The Court has also made it clear that a spouse do not even need to prove that such information would be circulated or misused. No matter whether it is disseminated or not; obtaining the same by the spouse itself is a violation of the fundamental right of the right to privacy.

The Court concludes the judgment underscoring one’s right to privacy in a conjugal relationship particularly that of women. “Trust forms the bedrock of matrimonial relationships. The spouses must have implicit and total faith and confidence in each other. Snooping on the other destroys the fabric of marital life. One cannot pry on the other. Coming specifically to the position of women, it is beyond dispute that they have their own autonomy. They are entitled to expect that their private space is not invaded. The wife may maintain a diary. She may jot down her thoughts and intimate feelings. She has every right to expect that her husband will not read its contents except with her consent.”