Recording wife's phone chat infringes her privacy: Punjab and Haryana High Court

Saurabh Malik

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, December 13

The Punjab and Haryana High Court has ruled that recording wife’s telephonic conversation without her knowledge was a clear-cut infringement of her privacy. The Bench also ruled telephonic chat surreptitiously recorded could not be produced before a court of law for deciding divorce petitions.

Justice Lisa Gill made it clear that the circumstances in which the conversations were held or the manner in which response elicited by a person recording the conversations could not be ascertained as the exchange would necessarily have been recorded surreptitiously by one of the parties.

Justice Gill added: “To permit a spouse to record conversations with an unsuspecting partner and to produce the same in a court of law to be made the basis of deciding a petition under Section 13 of the Hindu Marriage Act would indeed not be feasible.”

Referring to the High Court’s previous judgment, Justice Gill added it was observed that couples spoke many things with each other unaware that every word would be weighed in a court of law. Moreover, the court would be ill-equipped to assess the circumstances in which a particular response may have been elicited from a spouse at a given point of time, notwithstanding the right to cross-examine.

The ruling came in a case where a husband moved an application to submit a supplementary affidavit, along with memory cards/chips of mobile phones. It was stated in the application that various conversations between the husband and wife were recorded and stored by him. These were further recorded on a CD for convenience.

Justice Gill asserted the CD, in the court’s considered opinion, could not be permitted in evidence. The technicalities and procedures followed by the civil and criminal courts may not be applicable to proceedings before the family court. There was, in fact, no quarrel with a counsel’s argument that a family court was not bound by strict rules of evidence.

At the same time, it could not be ignored that acceptance of the CD would amount to a clear breach of fundamental right of the petitioner-wife — her right to privacy as upheld in various judicial pronouncements.

The High Court in its judgment delivered in 2014 had asserted that bedroom talk could not be used by husband against his wife. “A married woman too has a valuable right to her privacy of speech with her husband in the confines of the bedroom. Couples speak many things with each other unwary that every word would be weighed one day and put under the judicial scanner,” the court asserted.

Another Bench, subsequently, ruled that marriage did not bestow right on a husband to record private conversation with his wife.

CD of conversations not evidence

• The husband moved an application to submit a supplementary affidavit along with memory cards of mobile phones
• It was stated in the application that various conversations between the husband and wife were recorded and stored by him. These were further recorded on a CD for convenience
• Justice Lisa Gill asserted the CD, in the court’s considered opinion, could not be permitted in evidence.

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