Neha Vs Vibhor Garg (Punjab and Haryana High Court)
In a significant judgment, the Punjab and Haryana High Court has disallowed a husband from submitting a Compact Disc (CD) containing surreptitiously recorded conversations with his wife as evidence in a divorce petition. The Court ruled that such recordings, made without the wife’s knowledge or consent, constitute a violation of her fundamental right to privacy under Article 21 of the Constitution of India.
The decision, which disposes of two connected revision petitions (CR No. 1616 of 2020 filed by the wife and CR No. 2538 of 2020 filed by the husband), overturns an earlier order by the Principal Judge/Family Court, Bathinda, which had permitted the husband to prove the CD’s contents “subject to the condition of its correctness.”
Case Overview
The matter originated from a divorce petition filed by Vibhor Garg (husband) against Neha (wife) under Section 13 of the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955, in 2017. The couple married on February 20, 2009, and had a daughter born on May 11, 2011. An amended divorce petition was filed in April 2018.
During the proceedings, after the husband had submitted his initial affidavit by way of evidence, he moved an application on July 9, 2019. In this application, he sought permission to submit a supplementary affidavit along with a CD and transcriptions of alleged conversations recorded in his mobile phone’s memory cards/chips. He claimed these conversations, dating from 2010 to 2016, contained evidence of cruelty from his wife, a general ground for divorce he had pleaded. He attributed the omission of these specific conversations in earlier pleadings and affidavits to inadvertence.
