A Delhi court has dismissed a suit filed by a Major in the Indian Army who sought booking details and CCTV footage from a hotel where his wife and her lover, a junior officer, visited.

Judge Vaibhav Pratap Singh of Patiala House Court emphasised the right to privacy and said the idea of a man stealing away another person’s wife without holding the woman responsible was outdated.

“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 court observed.

The officer is undergoing a divorce with his wife and has alleged that she was involved in an affair with a junior of his in the Indian Army. He claimed that his wife and her alleged lover visited the hotel together, and he intended to use the CCTV footage in departmental proceedings.

The court said that the plaintiff was effectively attempting to use the court as a tool to gather evidence for his departmental proceedings against his wife’s alleged paramour.

“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,” said the court while rejecting his appeal.

Maintaining that the right to privacy is a fundamental right, the court said it also includes in itself the right to be left alone, to which the wife and her alleged paramour are entitled, should they have visited the hotel.

The court also said that the release of such private information without affording his wife and her alleged paramour an opportunity to defend their privacy rights would be a violation of their right to natural justice and even the fundamental right to privacy and could lead to reputational harm.

With inputs from Srishi Ojha

Published On:

May 23, 2025

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