Phone tapping || Test12345
1 Judge
Decision Date - 04.07.2023
Citation - S.B. Criminal Writ Petition No. 565/2022, 2023 SCC OnLine Raj 1108
Case Type - Criminal Writ Petition
Case Status - Cases disposed.
Legal Provisions - Section 5(2) of the Indian Telegraph Act 1885. Section 7, 8 of the Prevention of Corruption Act. Section 201 and 120B of the IPC. Article 19, 21 of the Constitution of India
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"When the statute provides procedural safeguards to prevent arbitrary infringement of the rights to privacy, it must be strictly followed. In other words, required mandates could not have been ignored or superceded by the State or its machinery leading to offend the right under Article 19 and 21 of the Constitution of India. If the directions of the Hon’ble Supreme Court in PUCL’ case (supra) which has been reinforced and approved by the Hon’ble Apex Court in Puttaswamy’s case (supra) as well as mandates of Acts and Rules are allowed to be flouted to affect illegal interception of messages it would lead to breeding contempt and arbitrariness."
Read moreAn order for interception of call details should be compliant with the requirements of the law and follow procedural safeguards. An interception order made under Section 5(2) of the Indian Telegraph Act should be in the interest of public emergency or public safety and record reasons in writing. Any arbitrary order of interception violates the right to privacy of the individual whose conversations are intercepted.
Read moreMethodology
The Privacy High Court Tracker has been developed using judgements pulled from the Manupatra case law database. Through its search function, CCG identified cases that relied upon the Puttaswamy judgment and were pertaining to the right to privacy, and filtered them by each of the 25 High Courts in India. These were then further examined to identify those cases whose decisions concerned a core aspect of privacy. CCG identified the following aspects of privacy (1) autonomy, (2) bodily integrity, (3) data protection, (4) dignity, (5) informational privacy, (6) phone tapping, (7) press freedom, (8) right to know and access information, and (9) surveillance, search and seizure. Cases where only incidental or passing observations or references were made to Puttaswamy and the right to privacy were not included in the tracker. The selected cases were then compiled into the database per High Court, with several details highlighted for ease of reference. These details consist of case name, decision date, case citation and number, case status, legal provisions involved, and bench strength. The tracker also includes select quotes concerning the right to privacy from each case, to assist users to more easily and quickly grasp the crux of the case.
For ease of access to the text of the judgments, each case on our tracker is linked to the Indian Kanoon version of the judgment (wherever available) or an alternative open-access version of the judgment text.
We welcome your feedback. In addition, you may write to us at - ccg@nludelhi.ac.in with the details of any privacy case we may not have included from any High Court in India.
