The Karnataka High Court recently quashed the order of a family court allowing access to tower location/call records of a person, who was not a party in a matrimonial dispute between a man and a woman.
The bench of Justice M Nagaprasanna said a third party’s privacy cannot be permitted to be violated on the specious plea of a man, who wants to prove his wife’s illicit relationship.
“A citizen has a right to safeguard the privacy of his own, his family, marriage and other incidental relationships. Informational privacy also forms an integral part of the right to privacy,” said the court, which was hearing a plea filed by the woman’s alleged lover, against the order of the family court.
The proceedings before the family court were initiated by the woman in 2018 for annulment of marriage on account of cruelty. The family court, on her husband’s plea alleging that she had an extramarital affair, had summoned the tower location details of the petitioner.
In its order, the family court had observed that the husband was not seeking “summoning of conversation through calls, SMS chats” but only tower location details for adjudication of the case in accordance with the law.
The person approached the high court contending that he is a third party to the proceedings and the order of the family court violated his right to privacy. The counsel for the husband, however, argued that he was entitled to place his defence in the proceedings before the family court. He asserted that the details as summoned by the family court were essential to disprove his wife’s allegation of cruelty as she only wanted to annul the marriage.
The single-judge bench noted that the petitioner’s personal mobile phone records such as tower location details had been allowed to be taken and produced in this case, without his knowledge.
The court held that in such a case, permitting such records of the petitioner to be accessed will be contrary to law. “A citizen has a right to safeguard the privacy of his own, his family, marriage and other incidental relationships,” it said, adding that the family court’s order undoubtedly violated informational privacy.
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