New Delhi: A Delhi court dismissed a man’s appeal to preserve his wife’s call detail records and upheld her right to privacy. It said that “talking to any person even at odd hours of the day cannot by itself put a question mark on the character of the woman.”“Indian society no longer remains a primitive society wherein a woman talking with a man is considered to be a taboo,” additional sessions judge Shunali Gupta said. While noting that the right to privacy may yield to the right to a fair trial in appropriate cases, the judge held that any invasion of privacy must be reasonably justified and cannot rest on vague suspicions or unsubstantiated allegations.The court upheld a trial court order that rejected Madhurendra Singh’s application which said the details of the late-night phone conversations were relevant to his defence in a matrimonial dispute case, and should be preserved. Singh contended that he had only sought preservation of the call records and not their production in court. The plea said that it was necessary to preserve the CDRs of “specific numbers” belonging to the complainant and certain other persons with whom she allegedly had regular conversations late at night, which, according to him, formed the main bone of contention between the parties.Holding that a woman’s late-night conversations, by themselves, cannot justify intrusion into her privacy, Judge Gupta said: “To my mind, talking to any person even at odd hours of the day cannot by itself put a question mark on the character of the woman, until and unless it has been alleged the woman has some illegal, adulterous etc relationship with a said man.”The court said such an order amounts to an infringement of the right to privacy.Judge Gupta stated that the plea must clearly state the reason why preservation of the CDR.”Observing that women today work across sectors and routinely interact with male colleagues, the court held that merely speaking to someone over the phone at night, without any allegation of an illegal relationship, cannot justify intrusion into a woman’s privacy.
