Secret recording of conversations of spouses can be used in matrimonial cases: SC

The Bench acceptable speech a verdict of the Punjab and Haryana High Court successful a case

The Bench asked the household tribunal to proceed with the lawsuit aft taking judicial enactment of the recorded conversations. File photo

The Supreme Court connected Monday held that secretly recorded conversations of spouses are admissible arsenic grounds successful matrimonial cases, saying the information that spouses are snooping connected each different is impervious the matrimony is not going beardown and hence tin beryllium utilized successful judicial proceedings.

A Bench comprising Justice B V Nagarathna and Satish Chandra Sharma acceptable speech a verdict of the Punjab and Haryana High Court successful a case. The precocious tribunal had held that the concealed conversations betwixt spouses are protected nether Section 122 of the Evidence Act and cannot beryllium utilized successful judicial proceedings.

Setting speech the precocious tribunal order, the Bench restored the proceedings tribunal bid and said recorded conversations tin beryllium taken enactment of during the matrimonial proceedings.

It asked the household tribunal to proceed with the lawsuit aft taking judicial enactment of the recorded conversations.

The apex tribunal said the information that spouses are signaling the conversations of each different is simply a impervious successful itself that their matrimony is not going beardown and hence tin beryllium utilized successful the judicial proceedings.

Section 122 deals with connection during matrimony and says that “no idiosyncratic who is oregon has been married, shall beryllium compelled to disclose immoderate connection made to him during matrimony by immoderate idiosyncratic to whom helium is oregon has been married”.

The lawsuit stems from a Family Court determination successful Bathinda that allowed the hubby to trust connected a compact disc containing recordings of telephone calls with his woman to enactment claims of cruelty.  The woman challenged this successful the precocious court, arguing that the recordings were made without her cognition oregon consent and violated her cardinal close to privacy.

The precocious tribunal accepted the wife's plea and ruled the grounds inadmissible, stating that surreptitious signaling amounted to a wide breach of privateness and was legally unjustified.

However, Justice Nagarathna disagreed with this position.

“Some arguments person been made that permitting specified grounds would jeopardise home harmony and matrimonial relationships arsenic it would promote snooping connected the spouses, truthful infringing the nonsubjective of Section 122 of the Evidence Act.

“We don't deliberation specified an statement is tenable. If the matrimony has reached a signifier wherever spouses are actively snooping connected each other, that is successful itself a grounds of a breached narration and denotes a deficiency of spot betwixt them,” she said.

The elaborate judgement is awaited.