'Right To Be Left Alone': Delhi Court Upholds Wife's Privacy After Major's Plea For Hotel CCTV

News18

24-05-2025

Last Updated:
A Delhi court rejected an Army Major's plea for hotel CCTV footage to prove his wife's alleged affair, citing the right to privacy.
A Delhi court on Friday rejected a plea by a man and upheld the right to privacy of his wife, whom he alleged was having an affair with a man.
The man identified himself as Major in the Indian Army and sought the CCTV footage of a hotel, where he alleged his wife was with another man, also a Major.
'The right to privacy and to be left alone in a hotel would extend to the common areas as against a third party who was not present there and has no other legally justifiable entitlement to seek the data of the guest. The same would hold good for the booking details," civil judge Vaibhav Pratap Singh of Patiala House Court observed, as he upheld the right to privacy of the wife and her alleged lover.
He added that the concept of 'stealing' the affection of a wife by another man, as if a woman is not in control of whom she loves, is 'dated" and has been rightly rejected by the Supreme Court Joseph Shine v. Union of India.
'The dated idea of a man stealing away the wife of another man, without ascribing any role or responsibility to the woman, is to be rejected. It takes agency away from women and dehumanises them," the judge said.
The court also cited the novel 'The End of the Affair' by Graham Greene, and said that even the Indian Parliament has given its imprimatur to the said jurisprudence when, while doing away with the colonial penal law, it enacted the The Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita and did not retain therein the offence of adultery, showing that the 'modern day Bharat has no place for gender- condescension and patriarchal notions."
As the major alleged his wife, with whom he was involved in a marital dispute and divorce, visited the hotel with her alleged paramour, the judge observed that hotels generally owe a duty of confidentiality to their guests and are required to protect the privacy of their records, including booking details and CCTV footage.
The court also said that the wife and her alleged paramour were central to the husband's claims, but they were not impleaded in the suit, which raised significant questions about their right to be heard before any disclosure was made.
Further, the judge said that courts are not meant to serve as investigative bodies for private disputes or as instruments for the collection of evidence in internal proceedings, especially when no clear legal entitlement to that evidence exists.
First Published:
May 24, 2025, 11:12 IST