Court: Husband recording phone call privacy breach

Saurabh Malik

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, June 1

The Punjab and Haryana High Court on Monday made it clear that a spouse did not part ways with his or her right to privacy after tying the knot and marriage would not bestow the right on a husband to record the private conversation with his wife.

The act of clandestinely recording conversation would, rather, amount to infringement of privacy rights, the High Court asserted. “An undercover conduct of the husband to record private spousal conversation without knowledge of the other is an infringement of privacy and can hardly be appreciated,” Justice Arun Monga of the HC ruled.

The ruling came on a habeas corpus petition filed by a mother for custody of her four-year-old daughter, allegedly taken away by her father in a clandestine manner. Her counsel Divyajot Sandhu submitted during the hearing that the minor’s custody with her father was “most certainly unlawful, given her tender age”.

The father, on the other hand, laid emphasis on the mother’s reported past misconduct, while placing on record the manuscript of a telephonic conversation recorded by him on his cell phone. Justice Monga asserted that the conversation was “sneakily recorded”.

Without going into personal details of the conversation or commenting on its merits, Justice Monga observed that prima facie, the husband contrived a situation to instigate the wife. Justice Monga noted that the attempt, on the face of it, was to elicit the desired response, which could later be used as evidence not only to belittle her, but also to buttress his allegations that she was stubborn and short-tempered.

Justice Monga further observed: “It is rather unfair that the husband, who would otherwise claim to be a law-abiding citizen and interested not to deprive her minor daughter of the special care and attention, which she so deserves, would deprive the child of her mother by indulging in such guileful means so as to record conversation arising out of matrimonial discord.”

Justice Monga stated that such “stealthy conduct” did not support his case that the child’s welfare and interest was being better looked after by him by divesting the mother of her daughter’s custody and by depriving the child of her biological and natural needs, which only a mother could provide, given that daughter was aged less than five.

Directing the father to hand over the minor’s custody to her mother by Tuesday while giving him access to her, Justice Monga added that the observations were “mere obiter dictum” in nature and would not affect the merits of the custody petition.