‘Modern Bharat has no place…’: Court rejects Army Major’s plea for hotel CCTV in adultery case against wife

A Delhi court on Friday rejected a petition from a man claiming to be a Major in the Indian Army, who requested the CCTV footage and booking records of a hotel where he alleged his wife had been with another man—also claimed to be a Major—during an ongoing marital dispute and divorce case. Civil Judge Vaibhav Pratap Singh of Patiala House Courts asserted the woman’s right to privacy, clearly stating that the right to solitude applies even in a hotel’s shared spaces against a third party lacking both presence at the site and any legal claim to the guests’ information.

“ The right to privacy 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,” the court said in its detailed order.

The judge rejected the man’s argument that he was entitled to access the information to prove adultery in his legal dispute with his wife. He observed that the notion of a man “stealing” the affection of another man’s wife was archaic and had been rightly discarded by the Supreme Court in Joseph Shine v. Union of India, which decriminalised adultery in 2018.

“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,” Singh noted.

The court additionally referenced literary and legal sources to support its decision. Referencing Graham Greene’s novel The End of the Affair, the judge emphasized the significance of honoring individual decisions in close relationships. He additionally highlighted that the Indian Parliament, by passing the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, has removed adultery as a crime, illustrating that “contemporary Bharat does not accommodate gender-condescension and patriarchal ideas.”

In its rationale, the court asserted that hotels had a responsibility of confidentiality to their patrons, which encompassed protecting the privacy of their information, including reservation details and security footage. The judge noted that any revelation in these instances would constitute a violation of that responsibility.

Significantly, the court also noted that neither the wife nor the alleged paramour had been impleaded in the proceedings. “The wife and her alleged paramour were central to the husband’s claims, yet they were not impleaded in the suit, raising serious concerns about their right to be heard before any disclosure was made,” the court stated.

Judge Singh made it clear that courts were not investigative agencies for private individuals seeking evidence in matrimonial disputes. “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,” he ruled.