Delhi HC directs CDR, hotel stay details be preserved in wife's case alleging infidelity

New Delhi, May 11 The Delhi High Court has directed the preservation of a guest register, booking invoices, CCTV footage by a Goa hotel, and a man's phone records after his wife filed for divorce on the grounds of infidelity.

Justice Swarana Kanta Sharma said that the records won't be given to any of the parties but rather retained by the relevant third persons and only brought before the trial court, if directed, at the proper point of trial.

The couple had tied the knot in 2012 but in 2017, the wife, alleging that the husband had left the marriage, filed a petition for divorce on the grounds of cruelty and desertion.

The woman alleged that she found an old phone in July 2021 and conversations between her husband and a different woman when they were newly-weds.

She then filed a second petition for divorce in December 2021 on the grounds of infidelity, which is still pending in the family court.

She then came to know that from August 15 to 20, 2020, the man had stayed with another woman in a Goa hotel, and subsequently moved an application before the relevant magistrate seeking call detail records of husband's mobile phone number with tower proximity between October 27, 2019 to October 27, 2022.

Holding that the notice of the same had to be served to the husband, the Magistrate dismissed the woman's application, and this was also upheld by the Additional Sessions Judge later.

Now, challenging both the orders, the wife moved the high court and moved an urgent application seeking ex-parte production and preservation of the hotel documents and records.

Observing that the wife's plea was only to direct the third parties to preserve the "crucial evidence", so that it is not destroyed by the time the trial reaches the appropriate stage of production of evidence, the court granted relief to her, and accordingly, directed everything be preserved.

"This court makes it clear that this order is being passed only for the purpose of preservation of the record so that the same is not tampered or destroyed with passage of time when the appropriate stage of trial reaches and in case the learned trial court comes to a conclusion that the same can be produced in the court by either of the parties, this order will not be construed to have conferred any right to them to do so," the court said.

"The concerned court will issue notice of the application moved by the concerned parties for production of these documents and record in the trial court for any purpose and after hearing the other side. The court will decide the application for production of such documents on its merits as per law," it added.

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