Records Without Voices: Judicial Direction for Preservation and Production of Call Detail Records and Tower-Location Data in Indian Civil and Matrimonial Proceedings

A Treatise on Relevance, Proportionality and Proof

Ten Propositions in Brief

1. Privacy is neither a bar to a CDR order nor a licence to demand one. The Delhi High Court and, by affirmance in Sachin Arora, the Supreme Court treat the question as one of relevance, necessity and proportionality.
2. The applicant must tie the record to a pleaded allegation, a named number, a defined period and a specific custodian.
3. Preservation is the lighter step and production the heavier. Aparna Choudhrie Kala shows a court preserving records without handing them to anyone and deferring production until the other side is heard.
4. Order XI is party-to-party. A telecom custodian is reached through Order XVI, Section 151 CPC, Section 14 of the Family Courts Act and Section 168 BSA (formerly Section 165 of the Evidence Act).
5. Sealed cover, restricted access and a bar on collateral use are the recurring safeguards in every successful order.
6. A person whose tower data is sought is entitled to be heard. Tanvi Chaturvedi upheld the paramour’s impleadment for exactly that reason.
7. In civil and commercial suits the court is far more restrictive; courts have refused preservation as a roving inquiry (Sitanshi Sharma) and a subscriber has no civil right to demand records directly from the operator.
8. Delay destroys proof. The licence minimum is two years, not one.
9. Production does not prove anything by itself. The certificate under Section 63 BSA (earlier Section 65B) must be furnished, and objections to its absence must be raised when the document is marked (Sonu).
10. The test is gender-neutral. Husbands and wives are treated alike; outcomes differ because pleadings differ (compare Tanvi Chaturvedi with CM v. NG).

I. Introduction

Call Detail Records (“CDRs”) are telecom-generated metadata. They are not the content of a call or message. They record, among other things, the numbers involved, the date, time and duration of communication and, in certain forms, the cell site through which a call was routed. A sequence of cell sites, a tower-location chart, can support an inference about a person’s approximate movements.

That is precisely why a court cannot treat them as ordinary discoverable documents. Patterns of contact reveal association; patterns of location reveal movement; and both can be intimate. Yet they can be decisive in a matrimonial dispute about adultery, desertion or cruelty, and occasionally in civil or commercial cases about fraud, impersonation or the misuse of a number.

The modern Indian position is therefore a middle one. A court may direct preservation or production where the request is specific, relevant, necessary, proportionate and fenced by safeguards.

Two recent developments anchor that position. On 29 August 2025 a Division Bench of the Delhi High Court decided Tanvi Chaturvedi v. Smita Shrivastava (2025:DHC:7474-DB), upholding a Family Court direction for CDRs and tower data. On 2 July 2026 the Supreme Court dismissed the husband’s appeal in Sachin Arora v. Manju Arora (2026 SCC OnLine SC 1298), a separate matter in which the Delhi High Court had upheld preservation and production of hotel records and CDRs in sealed cover.

Three verbs need to be kept apart throughout this treatise, because most badly drafted applications blur them.

• Preserve means the custodian must retain the record.
• Produce means the custodian must send it to the court, ordinarily in sealed cover.
• Release means the court allows a party to see or use it.

Each step is more intrusive than the last, and each needs its own justification.

II. The Anatomy of a Call Detail Record

A. What the Record Contains

A CDR is maintained by the telecom service provider for communications passing through its network. It ordinarily shows the calling and called numbers, date, time and duration, the identity of the cell site, and sometimes the type of communication (voice, SMS, data).

A tower-location chart is the sequence of cell sites to which a handset connected. The Department of Telecommunications’ licence uses the family of terms CDR, Exchange Detail Record (EDR) and IP Detail Record (IPDR); each is treated alike for retention purposes.

Even so, the metadata is revealing. Late-night calls, repeated calls to one number, calls immediately before or after an alleged meeting, and tower movement can corroborate or weaken an allegation.

Equally, the limits must be stated plainly: a call record proves contact, not content; a tower record shows proximity to a cell site, not an exact address. The Delhi High Court itself describes such data as corroborative material that may establish or negate an alleged association.

B. A Ladder of Intrusiveness

Courts do not treat all telecom material alike. The following table is an analytical synthesis of how the reported decisions behave; it is not a quotation from any single judgment.

III. The Constitutional Foundation: Privacy Is Not Absolute

A. Puttaswamy and the Proportionality Frame

The starting point is Justice K.S. Puttaswamy (Retd.) v. Union of India, (2017) 10 SCC 1, which recognised privacy as a fundamental right under Article 21 and required any interference to satisfy four conditions: a source in law, a legitimate aim, necessity in a democratic society, and proportionality with procedural safeguards against abuse.

Puttaswamy concerned state action. A litigant who asks a court to compel a telecom company is not the State, but the court’s order is. That is why the proportionality vocabulary has migrated into private-law applications for sensitive evidence.

B. Joseph Shine and the Survival of Adultery as a Civil Ground

Adultery was decriminalised in Joseph Shine v. Union of India, (2019) 3 SCC 39. It nevertheless remains a ground for divorce under Section 13(1)(i) of the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955.

In Sachin Arora the Delhi High Court relied on both Puttaswamy and Joseph Shine for the proposition that the husband’s privacy was a qualified right, and observed that the wife’s application rested not merely on morality but on specific rights under the Hindu Marriage Act and the Family Courts Act.

C. Telephone Privacy and the Interception Cases

People’s Union for Civil Liberties v. Union of India, (1997) 1 SCC 301, recognised a telephone conversation as an important facet of private life and laid down safeguards for interception under Section 5(2) of the Indian Telegraph Act, 1885.

R.M. Malkani v. State of Maharashtra, (1973) 1 SCC 471, held that a tape-recorded conversation is admissible if relevant, if the voice is identified and if the recording is accurate, and rejected a privacy-based challenge.

These cases concern content and interception. They are cited here to mark the boundary: a CDR order is not an interception order, and nothing in a CDR direction authorises access to what was said.

D. Sharda v. Dharmpal: The Matrimonial Court’s Power to Order a Limited Intrusion

Sharda v. Dharmpal, (2003) 4 SCC 493 (decided 28 March 2003, S.B. Sinha J., Civil Appeal No. 5933 of 2000) is not a CDR case.

It held that a matrimonial court may direct a party to undergo medical examination, that such a direction does not violate Article 21 where a strong prima facie case is made out and it is necessary to reach the truth, and that refusal may attract an adverse inference.

Its conclusions are in paragraphs 80 and 81. The Delhi High Court relied on it in Tanvi Chaturvedi for the proposition that limited incursions into privacy are permissible in matrimonial disputes where necessary to discover the truth.

An application should therefore be framed as a narrowly tailored evidentiary measure, never as a demand for private information.

Principle in Brief

Privacy is a qualified right. A matrimonial or civil court may order a limited intrusion where:

1. The record bears on a pleaded issue.
2. The intrusion is confined in time, number and category.
3. There is no equally effective and less intrusive route.
4. The order is wrapped in safeguards.

Remove any one of the four and the order becomes vulnerable.

IV. Statutory and Procedural Sources of Power

No single provision confers a freestanding “right to CDRs”. Courts assemble the power from several sources, and an applicant should plead the combination that fits the forum and the custodian.

The table summarises the toolkit; the paragraphs that follow add the cautions.

A Caution on Forum

Matrimonial courts have been the most receptive because of Section 14 of the Family Courts Act. An ordinary civil court has no equivalent latitude and must work through Order XVI and Section 151 with a much stronger showing of necessity.

The Evidence Act has been replaced by the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam, 2023; the two Delhi judgments discussed here still speak the language of the old Act in places, so a practitioner should cite the BSA counterpart alongside it.

V. The Leading Authorities

A. Sachin Arora v. Manju Arora: From the Delhi High Court to the Supreme Court

Delhi High Court: CM(M) 64/2023, 2023:DHC:3197, 2023 SCC OnLine Del 2692, Rekha Palli J., decided 10 May 2023 (reserved 3 May 2023).

Supreme Court: 2026 SCC OnLine SC 1298, Civil Appeal No. 400 of 2024, Manmohan and K. Vinod Chandran JJ., order of 2 July 2026, dismissing the husband’s civil appeal.

Facts

The parties married on 4 December 1998 and had a daughter. The wife alleged cruelty, domestic violence and adultery. She said that between 29 April and 1 May 2022 the husband stayed with another woman and her daughter in a room at Hotel Fairmont, Jaipur, and relied on photographs.

When the hotel declined to supply booking details, reservation records, identity proofs and payment information for the room, she applied to the Family Court under Order XVI CPC read with Section 14 of the Family Courts Act.

By its order of 14 December 2022 the Family Court directed the hotel to preserve and send the records in sealed cover and directed the telecom companies to preserve and send the CDRs of two mobile numbers belonging to the husband for the period as 1 June 2021 to 30 June 2022.

Questions Before the High Court

1. Had the wife made out a prima facie case, and was the information sought relevant to the lis?
2. Would the direction infringe the privacy of the husband, of the woman with whom he allegedly stayed, or of the minor child?

Holdings

• The wife had no direct evidence, and adultery by its nature is inferred from circumstances. By resort to Section 14 of the Family Courts Act she was seeking evidence she reasonably believed would prove the charge. Prima facie case and relevance were both established.
• Section 14 gives the Family Court wide power to receive evidence that assists it, irrespective of whether it is relevant or admissible under the Evidence Act.
• The husband’s objection rested solely on privacy. Relying on Puttaswamy and Joseph Shine, the court held privacy is not absolute, and that the wife’s claim rested on statutory rights under the Hindu Marriage Act and the Family Courts Act.
• The records sought pertained only to the husband, not to his friend or her daughter, so their privacy was not engaged.
• The court also rejected the “roving or fishing enquiry” objection: the wife was not asking about a stranger but about her own husband, for a specific hotel and a specific stay.

The Supreme Court’s Affirmance

On 2 July 2026, the Supreme Court dismissed the appeal and declined to interfere with the concurrent findings of the Family Court and the High Court on production of the hotel records and CDRs. The reasoning on privacy, relevance and Section 14 remains the High Court’s.

B. Tanvi Chaturvedi v. Smita Shrivastava: The Division Bench’s Calibrated Order

MAT.APP.(F.C.) 251/2025 and connected appeals; 2025:DHC:7474-DB; 2025 SCC OnLine Del 5712 (reported under the cause title X v. Y); Anil Kshetarpal and Harish Vaidyanathan Shankar JJ., judgment authored by Kshetarpal J., decided 29 August 2025. The matrimonial proceeding below is HMA No. 479/2023 (Smita Shrivastava v. Sumit Verma & Anr.).

Facts and the Order Under Appeal

The wife sought dissolution on grounds of adultery and cruelty under Section 13(1)(i) and (ia) of the Hindu Marriage Act, and impleaded the alleged paramour. The parties married in 2002.

By its common order of 29 April 2025 the Family Court:

1. Refused to delete the paramour from the array of parties.
2. Allowed the wife’s Section 151 CPC application, directing the SHO and the telecom providers to produce the husband’s CDRs and the tower-location charts of the husband and the paramour from January 2020 onwards.
3. On the wife’s Order XI Rule 14 application for twenty-four categories of documents, directed production of certain financial records (bank and credit-card statements, UPI transactions, demat accounts and ESOP details) while rejecting others as fishing.

What the Division Bench Decided

The Operative Model

The Division Bench directed the SHO to call for the CDRs of the husband and the tower-location charts of the husband and the paramour from the concerned providers, and to place them in sealed cover before the Family Court. Access was to be restricted to the court and counsel, under confidentiality safeguards (as stated in the draft; confirm in the operative paragraph).

As a template it is hard to improve: a neutral mechanism, a named category, a defined period, sealed cover, restricted access and a pleading-linked purpose.

Ratio, Restated

1. Relevance is necessary but not sufficient; the record must bear on a material issue already pleaded.
2. The request must be time-bound to the period pleaded.
3. Tower data demands particular caution because it reveals movement.
4. Privacy is balanced, not eliminated: sealed cover and confidentiality are conditions of disclosure.
5. Section 151 CPC, read with Section 14 of the Family Courts Act and the judge’s general power to order production, can support such relief.
6. A third party whose data is sought should be impleaded and heard.

C. Aparna Choudhrie Kala v. Vaibhav Kala: Preservation Without Release

Crl.Rev.P. 480/2023, 2023:DHC:3222, Swarana Kanta Sharma J., reserved 1 May 2023, pronounced 8 May 2023. The names are masked in the judgment as ‘X’, ‘Y’ and ‘Z’.

This is the most instructive case on sequence. The wife had complained under Section 12 of the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act and also had a divorce petition on grounds of cruelty and a later one on adultery.

On learning of a hotel stay in Goa in August 2020, she applied under Order XI Rules 12 and 14 CPC for ex parte preservation and production of the hotel’s guest register, invoices, payment details, emails and CCTV footage, and of the husband’s CDRs with tower proximity for 27 October 2019 to 27 October 2022. The Magistrate and the Sessions Court dismissed the application.

The High Court held that Order XI Rules 12 and 14 apply between parties, so the relief could not be claimed against a non-party hotel under those rules.

It nevertheless allowed the revision for the narrow purpose of preservation, because the custodian was a third party and the evidence could be lost with time. It directed the hotel records, CCTV footage and the husband’s CDRs with tower proximity for the stated three-year period to be preserved.

It was emphatic about what it was not doing:

• The records were not to be handed to either party.
• They were to be produced before the trial court only if later directed.
• The order conferred no right to production.
• No finding was made on genuineness or evidentiary value.
• The trial court was to issue notice and decide any production application on merits after hearing the other side (paragraphs 12 and 13).

Why This Case Matters to a Practitioner

It supplies the answer to the commonest objection, “the application is premature”. A preservation-only order does not decide relevance, admissibility or production. It freezes the record. It is also the safest first prayer where the telecom retention clock is running.

D. Where the Courts Have Said No

Sitanshi Sharma v. Vandana Sharma (Delhi High Court, 2021)

CM(M) 626/2021, Amit Bansal J., reported as decided on 20 September 2021.

In a civil suit for a permanent injunction against the petitioner’s in-laws, an application was made for preservation of a respondent’s CDRs to contest where the husband was residing. The trial court refused.

The database headnote records that the High Court treated the request as a roving inquiry that invaded privacy rights, and that it considered the Supreme Court’s directions in Arjun Panditrao Khotkar on CDR preservation.

CM v. NG (Chhattisgarh High Court, July 2025)

WP227 No. 612 of 2025, Rakesh Mohan Pandey J.; reported as 2025 SCC OnLine Chh 7394 in SCC Online’s roundup.

A husband suing for divorce on cruelty alone sought his wife’s CDRs on suspicion of an affair with her brother-in-law, first through the SSP and then the Family Court.

The High Court upheld the refusal: marriage does not give one spouse automatic access to the other’s private communications, and vague suspicion cannot justify an intrusion. The Family Court application had not disclosed the relevance of the CDRs in specific terms and adultery was not even a pleaded ground.

The Contrast Is in the Pleadings, Not the Parties

Tanvi Chaturvedi and Sachin Arora involved wives with pleaded adultery, named hotels or named persons, and dated windows. CM v. NG involved a husband whose petition did not plead adultery and whose application rested on suspicion.

The test is gender-neutral. Applicants who lose do so for want of a pleaded nexus, not because of who they are.

E. Supporting Decisions from Other High Courts

• Radeena D.N. v. Rahul K., 2020 SCC OnLine Ker 20535 (Kerala High Court): as cited in Aparna Choudhrie Kala: where a husband alleged adultery, call details and mobile tower details were matters of evidence he was entitled to seek, and a document in another’s possession could be brought in through Order XVI.
• K. Srinivasa Rao v. N. Naga Kamala Rani, CRP 2385/2018: as cited in Aparna Choudhrie Kala as a Telangana High Court decision: where divorce is sought on adultery, hotel records summoned in original are important primary evidence even when photocopies exist, and the Family Court ought not to refuse summons under Order XVI Rule 6.
• Deepti Kapur v. Kunal Julka, 2020 SCC OnLine Del 672 (Delhi High Court): quoted in Aparna Choudhrie Kala: relevance is a threshold test, admission into the record is not proof, and Section 14 of the Family Courts Act makes the threshold even less stringent.
• Paramjit Kaur v. State of Haryana, CRR No. 2605 of 2023 (O&M), 2023:PHHC:156074, Harpreet Singh Brar J., 4 December 2023 (Punjab & Haryana): in an NDPS case the accused sought CDRs and tower data of the arresting police party under Section 91 CrPC; the High Court held the accused’s fair-trial right can prevail over the police officials’ privacy, with the accused first showing necessity. The context is criminal; see Part XI for how far it travels.

F. The Authority Map

VI. CDRs, Call Content and the Interception Boundary

A court should not allow a CDR application to become a disguised request for recordings, messages or surveillance. The application must be honest about the category of record sought, for three reasons.

1. Different Custodians and Different Law

Interception of content is a statutory power of the State, historically under Section 5(2) of the Indian Telegraph Act, 1885, with the safeguards in PUCL v. Union of India (1997) 1 SCC 301.

A private litigant has no entitlement to it. A CDR direction to a custodian is not an interception order and cannot be stretched into one.

2. Different Intrusion

Metadata is revealing, but content discloses what was said. The reported matrimonial orders consistently refuse content-adjacent requests.

In Tanvi Chaturvedi the demand for WhatsApp, Teams and Messenger chats was refused as speculative while CDRs and tower data were allowed.

3. Different Proof

A subscriber’s own copy of his or her own chat or recording is evidence in the party’s hands, to be proved under the electronic-evidence provisions. A telecom custodian’s metadata is proved through the custodian.

Vibhor Garg v. Neha, 2025 INSC 829

The Supreme Court’s decision of 14 July 2025 (2025 SCC OnLine SC 1421; SLP (C) No. 21195 of 2021; Nagarathna and S.C. Sharma JJ.) must be read alongside the CDR cases but not confused with them.

A Family Court in Bathinda had allowed a husband to place memory cards and transcripts of secretly recorded calls with his wife on record. The High Court reversed, relying on Rayala M. Bhuvaneswari v. Nagaphanender Rayala (AIR 2008 AP 98) and treating covert recording as a privacy violation.

The Supreme Court set that aside and restored the Family Court’s order. It held that:

• The marital-communication privilege in Section 122 of the Evidence Act (now Section 128 BSA) does not bar proof in a dispute between the spouses themselves.
• Section 14 of the Family Courts Act permits the Family Court to receive such evidence.
• Illegally obtained evidence is not for that reason inadmissible (following Yusufalli Esmail Nagree and R.M. Malkani).
• The recordings, once certified under Section 65B, are admissible.

The Court noted factors suggested by the amicus that a Family Court may consider, but did not make them binding.

What Vibhor Garg Adds and What It Does Not

It adds, at Supreme Court level, the proposition that privacy yields to fair trial in matrimonial proof, and that Section 14 relaxes admissibility.

It does not concern a third-party telecom custodian, a tower chart or a paramour’s data. A recording by one spouse of that spouse’s own call is a different animal from compelled disclosure by a non-party.

Use it for the principle, not the procedure.

Vaibhav Dubey v. Smt. Asha Dubey

A Chhattisgarh High Court decision in Vaibhav Dubey v. Smt. Asha Dubey (Writ Petition (227) No. 158 of 2025) Decided by a single-bench of Justice Ashish Shroti on February 11, 2026 followed the same line for a wife’s call recordings and WhatsApp chats.

VII. Electronic Evidence: Getting From Production to Proof

An order for production is only the beginning. A CDR printout, export or file is an electronic record, and its admissibility turns on the certificate regime.

A. The Supreme Court’s Line

Navjot Sandhu, (2005) 11 SCC 600 permitted proof of telephone records by secondary evidence without a Section 65B certificate.

Anvar P.V. v. P.K. Basheer, (2014) 10 SCC 473, overruled it on that point and held Sections 65A and 65B to be a complete code.

Sonu @ Amar v. State of Haryana, (2017) 8 SCC 570 (2017 INSC 634; 18 July 2017) dealt directly with CDRs.

The CDRs had been marked without a certificate; the Court held the objection was one of mode of proof and had to be taken when the document was marked, not later on appeal.

Shafhi Mohammad v. State of H.P., (2018) 2 SCC 801, which had relaxed the certificate where a party did not control the device, was overruled in Arjun Panditrao.

Union of India v. Ravindra V. Desai, (2018) 16 SCC 273, which treated non-production of the certificate on an earlier occasion as a curable defect.

Arjun Panditrao Khotkar v. Kailash Kushanrao Gorantyal, (2020) 7 SCC 1 (three Judges, 14 July 2020; Nariman, Ramasubramanian and Bhat JJ.) held Anvar to be the law, clarified that the certificate is unnecessary only where the original device or document itself is produced by the person who owns or operates it, and allowed a party who cannot obtain the certificate to ask the court to direct the custodian to furnish it.

Why a CDR Requires the Operator’s Certificate

For a CDR, the original lives on the operator’s system. The party’s printout is a copy, so the certificate must come from the operator’s authorised signatory.

That is why the prayer must ask the court to direct production with a certificate, and why Part XV’s model prayer does so.

B. The BSA Era

The Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam, 2023 replaced the Evidence Act.

Section 63 BSA is the successor to Section 65B and prescribes a certificate in the form given in the Schedule to the Adhiniyam.

The old section should be cited so that a reader on either side of the transition can follow, and confirm the current Schedule format before drafting the custodian’s certificate.

The principle in Arjun Panditrao, that electronic records require proof of authenticity and a proper certificate, carries over.

C. The Arjun Preservation Directions: Do Not Over-Read Them

In Arjun Panditrao the Supreme Court issued general directions to cellular companies and internet service providers to maintain CDRs and related records in a segregated and secure manner where a CDR or record is seized during investigation, so that it can be summoned at the defence-evidence or cross-examination stage.

Those directions arose out of criminal investigation.

A civil litigant who cites them to demand preservation of a third party’s CDRs in an ordinary suit is borrowing an authority that does not carry that load, and the Delhi High Court’s approach in Sitanshi Sharma is consistent with that view (see Part V.D).

Cite Arjun Panditrao for the certificate; cite it for preservation only where the record was seized in a criminal investigation.

D. Weight, Not Just Admissibility

Even properly proved, a CDR corroborates; it does not conclude.

• A call record shows communication, not its subject.
• Tower data shows proximity to a site, not an exact place.

The Delhi High Court’s own language, that such material is corroborative, is the right register for pleadings and for judgments.

VIII. Retention: Why Preservation Cannot Wait

The Department of Telecommunications amended the Unified Licence on 21 December 2021 (the amendment was extended to other licence categories on 22 December 2021). Clause 39.20, Part I, Charter VI (Security Conditions), previously required commercial records, CDRs, EDRs and IPDRs to be archived for at least one year for security scrutiny. As amended, it requires archiving for at least two years, and telecom companies may destroy the stored data thereafter if the Licensor gives no direction. Part II, Chapter IX, para 7.1 imposes a two-year minimum for internet and internet-telephony records. The Department’s RTI replies add that the licence conditions do not oblige service providers to give CDRs to the general public.

Three Practical Consequences Follow

1. Move Early Where the pleaded period is approaching or past the retention window, lead with a preservation-only prayer on the Aparna Choudhrie Kala model. A Punjab & Haryana single-Judge order reported in August 2025 (Alok Jain J.) directed preservation of CDRs and tower data in a matrimonial criminal complaint and recorded that telecom companies keep such data for two years. The Court succinctly observed thus: “At the same time, the privacy of an individual is also heavily weighed, but when compared to the fundamental right of a citizen as to whether to preserve the privacy of an individual will lead to inability of discovery of truth, in my opinion the fundamental right for discovery of truth would be of much more importance. Article 21 of the Constitution lays down the principle of natural justice and the denial of access to evidence which would be lost if not preserved within time will lead to miscarriage of justice.”
2. Go Through the Court A litigant has no direct contractual or statutory claim to a third party’s CDR. A report of a District Judge’s appellate decision at Saket (Shankar Lal v. Bharti Airtel) decided on 30 October, 2025 in the Court of District Judge -02 South East District, Saket, New Delhi RCA DJ No.46/2024 CNR No. DLSE01-006629-2022 records that a plaint for a mandatory injunction against a telecom company to supply a subscriber’s call records was rejected under Order VII Rule 11 and the proper channel was identified as a court order.
3. Identify the Custodian Precisely The prayer should name the service provider, the number, the period and the category, and require the nodal officer’s certificate of availability.

IX. Preservation, Production and Release: The Test

Each stage has a different threshold. The table states what the reported decisions require at each.

The Eight Questions a Court Should Ask

1. Is the allegation pleaded with particulars, or is it a bare suspicion?
2. Which number, which provider, which period, and why that period?
3. Does the record bear on a material issue, or on collateral colour?
4. Is there a less intrusive route (hotel records, CCTV, bank records, device records, witnesses, the opponent’s own documents) and has it been tried?
5. Is a real risk of loss shown, by reference to the two-year licence floor or other facts?
6. Does the request reach a non-party? If so, has that person been impleaded or given an opportunity to object?
7. Can the order be framed as preservation first, with production decided after a hearing?
8. What safeguards are available: sealed cover, restricted access, redaction, no collateral use, return or destruction at disposal?

X. Matrimonial Proceedings in Practice

Matrimonial cases remain the principal field. Adultery is seldom proved directly; patterns of contact, timing and location are the usual circumstantial route, and Section 14 of the Family Courts Act gives the Family Court latitude. A well-framed application will link each record to a specific allegation.

Illustrative Linkage

The husband allegedly maintained a continuing relationship with Respondent No. 2 between [month/year] and [month/year] (petition, para __). CDRs of the husband’s number [●] and tower-location charts of both numbers are necessary to test the allegations of frequent contact and of meetings at [named places] on [named dates]. The requested period is confined to the period pleaded. The records are sought in sealed cover and for use only in the present proceeding.

What to Include

Allegations tied to named hotels, dates and places; a showing that the applicant has tried less intrusive routes (the hotel declined, CCTV was unavailable); the other party’s own number; and, where a third person’s data is sought, that person’s impleadment (Tanvi Chaturvedi).

What to Leave Out

Message content, social media, and broad categories such as FASTag, leave records or travel details unless each is tied to a specific allegation. The Division Bench in Tanvi Chaturvedi accepted hotel and financial records only where a specific link was shown.

On Adultery as a Ground

Adultery is no longer a crime after Joseph Shine, but it remains a ground under Section 13(1)(i) of the Hindu Marriage Act. The court is therefore protecting the integrity of a statutory civil ground, not enforcing morality.

XI. Civil, Commercial and Criminal Comparators

A. Ordinary Civil and Commercial Suits

The position is more restrictive. A court will not ordinarily order production of a third party’s CDR merely because it may help a claim in contract, fraud, employment or defamation. The applicant must show a concrete nexus. Examples that may qualify, on the draft’s analysis, include:

• A fraud in which the alleged fraudster used a particular number during the transaction period;
• An employee alleged to have communicated with a competitor while bound by confidentiality;
• A forgery or impersonation case where the number is directly linked to the act; and
• A case where the opposing party itself relies on phone records and the applicant seeks the complete record.

Even then the court should ask first whether the same fact can be proved by emails, WhatsApp exports, access logs, invoices, GPS data, CCTV, bank records, witnesses or documents in the opponent’s own hands.

Where the telephone number is a company-owned line, the company is itself the subscriber, and a request to its own operator may avoid the need for a third-party order altogether. This is a practical observation rather than a reported holding.

Sitanshi Sharma illustrates the difficulty of using a civil suit as a vehicle: preservation of a respondent’s CDR to prove where he lived was refused as a roving inquiry that invaded privacy.

B. Criminal Comparators

Section 94 BNSS (formerly Section 91 CrPC) allows a criminal court or police officer to summon production of a document or thing. Paramjit Kaur (2023:PHHC:156074) holds that an accused’s fair-trial right can justify preservation and production of call details and tower location of police officials, with the accused first showing necessity, and a limited breach of privacy being acceptable to discover the truth.

A Punjab & Haryana single-Judge order of August 2025 (Alok Jain J.), on a matrimonial-origin criminal complaint, applied similar reasoning to preserve a complainant’s and others’ data. These decisions are persuasive in civil courts only by analogy: the criminal accused has Article 21 interests that a civil litigant does not.

XII. Third-Party Privacy

The hardest cases involve a person who is not a party: the alleged paramour whose tower data is sought, or the hotel guest whose name appears in a register. That person’s privacy interest is independent. The fact that the applicant alleges a relationship does not justify disclosure of that person’s entire communication history.

The Reported Decisions Manage the Problem in Four Ways

1. Only the Party’s Own Records In Sachin Arora the court emphasised that the records sought were the husband’s alone; the woman and her child were not affected.
2. Impleadment In Tanvi Chaturvedi the paramour was impleaded, because a finding of adultery against her without a hearing would offend audi alteram partem and touch her dignity. Her tower data was then ordered, but only within the pleaded period and in sealed cover.
3. Preservation Without Release Aparna Choudhrie Kala kept hotel guest registers and CCTV out of both parties’ hands pending a reasoned production order.
4. Redaction and Narrowing A court faced with an over-broad request should narrow rather than reject outright, and may redact unrelated numbers and third-party entries.

XIII. The Data Protection Overlay

The Digital Personal Data Protection Rules, 2025 were notified on 13–14 November 2025 and operationalise the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 in stages. The provisions constituting the Data Protection Board took effect immediately; the substantive obligations on data fiduciaries and the rights of data principals (Sections 3 to 17 of the Act and most of the Rules) commence about eighteen months later, that is, around 13–14 May 2027, so they are not yet in force as in November 2026.

The Act contains exemptions for processing necessary to enforce a legal right or claim, and for judicial functions.

Practitioners should nonetheless anticipate that telecom operators and counsel will increasingly invoke data-protection language, and should draft custodian directions that identify the legal compulsion (the court’s order) and the safeguards (sealed cover, restricted access) so as to give the nodal officer a clean basis to comply.

XIV. Anticipating Objections

XV. Drafting the Application

A. Anatomy of a Well-Built Application

B. Model Prayer

It is therefore most respectfully prayed that this Hon’ble Court may be pleased to:

1. direct [Name of Telecom Service Provider], through its Nodal Officer, to preserve and retain the call detail records, tower-location data and associated electronic records of mobile number [●] registered to [name, if known] for the period [date] to [date], being the period pleaded in paragraph(s) [●] of the [petition/plaint], and to certify in writing within [●] days whether such records exist for the whole of that period;
2. direct that the said records be preserved in the custody of the concerned service provider and not be released to any party, and that, if produced, they be kept in sealed cover in the custody of the Court, pending further orders;
3. after notice to the opposite party and to any affected third party, and after considering relevance, necessity and proportionality, direct production of only such records as are strictly necessary to decide the issues framed;
4. direct that the records be produced with the certificate required under Section 63 of the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam, 2023 (corresponding to Section 65B of the Indian Evidence Act, 1872) and an affidavit of the custodian as to the source, period, format, completeness and chain of custody;
5. impose confidentiality safeguards, including sealed-cover production, access confined to the Court and counsel of record, redaction of unrelated third-party entries where feasible, a bar on publication or collateral use, and return or destruction on final disposal;
6. grant liberty to any person whose data is affected to file objections before production is ordered; and
7. pass such further or other order as this Hon’ble Court deems fit in the interests of justice.

C. A Template for the Operative Part of the Order

1. Identify the custodian, the number or numbers, the category of record and the exact period, by reference to the pleaded paragraphs.
2. Direct preservation first; state expressly that no right to production is conferred and that no finding is made on relevance, genuineness or evidentiary value.
3. Direct production, if ordered, through a neutral mechanism (for example the Registrar or the investigating officer, as in Tanvi Chaturvedi) into sealed cover.
4. Limit access to the Court and counsel of record; provide for redaction; prohibit publication and collateral use.
5. Require the custodian’s certificate under Section 63 BSA and an affidavit of source and completeness.
6. Provide for notice to, and a hearing of, any affected non-party.
7. Provide for custody, return or destruction on final disposal.

XVI. Practitioner’s Checklists

For the Applicant

• Have I pleaded the allegation, with places and dates, before applying?
• Have I fixed the number, provider, category and period, and tied the period to the pleading?
• Have I tried and recorded a less intrusive route?
• Is the retention clock running? If so, have I led with a preservation-only prayer?
• Have I impleaded, or offered a hearing to, any non-party whose data is sought?
• Have I avoided asking for message content, social media or broad categories?
• Does my prayer require a Section 63 BSA certificate and a custodian’s affidavit?
• Have I offered every safeguard: sealed cover, restricted access, redaction, no collateral use?

For the Respondent

• Is the allegation pleaded with particulars or only suspected (compare CM v. NG)?
• Is the period wider than the pleading? Is tower data sought where a call log would do?
• Does the request reach third parties? Have they been heard?
• Is Order XI being invoked against a non-party custodian (Aparna Choudhrie Kala)?
• Is the application seeking production when only preservation is justified?
• Are safeguards adequate? If not, propose them, because courts will prefer narrowing to refusal.

For the Court

• Is the order the least intrusive that serves the need? Can it be limited to preservation?
• Are number, period, category, custodian and mechanism all stated?
• Have affected third parties been heard or impleaded?
• Is the sealed-cover custody, access and return protocol written into the order?
• Does the order disclaim any finding on relevance or admissibility?

XVII. Observations for Reform

The case law has converged faster than the machinery. Four improvements would help courts and parties alike.

1. A uniform protocol for sealed-cover custody. The cases repeatedly say “sealed cover” without saying who holds it, who may open it and when it is returned or destroyed. A short practice direction would remove the guesswork.
2. A standard nodal-officer response. A one-page format stating whether records exist for the period, in what form, and the signatory’s authority would also serve as the Section 63 BSA certificate.
3. Coordination of retention and litigation timelines. With a two-year licence floor, a litigant who learns of an affair late in the day may find the record gone. Courts should hear preservation applications with urgency and without prejudice to production.
4. Hearing the absent. Tanvi Chaturvedi’s approach, impleading the person whose data is sought, should be the default whenever tower data of a non-party is requested.

XVIII. Conclusion

Indian courts may direct preservation and production of CDRs and tower-location data, but never automatically. The power is assembled from Section 151 CPC, Order XVI, discovery principles, Section 14 of the Family Courts Act where applicable and the judge’s general power to order production, and it is disciplined by privacy and proportionality.

The Delhi High Court’s decisions in Sachin Arora (affirmed by the Supreme Court on 2 July 2026) and Tanvi Chaturvedi show what a defensible order looks like: a pleaded allegation, a named custodian, a defined period, sealed cover, restricted access and, for a non-party, a hearing. Aparna Choudhrie Kala shows how to protect the record without releasing it. Sitanshi Sharma and CM v. NG show what happens when the pleading, the nexus or the forum is missing. Arjun Panditrao and Sonu show what must still be done after production for the record to count. And the licence’s two-year floor reminds every litigant that delay can destroy the evidence.

The decisive question is always the same: whether the specific record sought is genuinely necessary to decide a material issue, and whether the intrusion can be justified and safely contained.

Appendix A: Citation Table

Appendix B: Table of Authorities

Supreme Court

• Anvar P.V. v. P.K. Basheer, (2014) 10 SCC 473
• Arjun Panditrao Khotkar v. Kailash Kushanrao Gorantyal, (2020) 7 SCC 1
• Joseph Shine v. Union of India, (2019) 3 SCC 39
• Justice K.S. Puttaswamy (Retd.) v. Union of India, (2017) 10 SCC 1
• People’s Union for Civil Liberties v. Union of India, (1997) 1 SCC 301
• R.M. Malkani v. State of Maharashtra, (1973) 1 SCC 471
• Sachin Arora v. Manju Arora, 2026 SCC OnLine SC 1298 (2 July 2026)
• Sharda v. Dharmpal, (2003) 4 SCC 493
• Sonu @ Amar v. State of Haryana, (2017) 8 SCC 570
• State (NCT of Delhi) v. Navjot Sandhu, (2005) 11 SCC 600
• Vibhor Garg v. Neha, 2025 INSC 829

High Courts

• Aparna Choudhrie Kala v. Vaibhav Kala, 2023:DHC:3222 (Delhi)
• CM v. NG, WP227 No. 612 of 2025 (Chhattisgarh)
• Paramjit Kaur v. State of Haryana, 2023:PHHC:156074 (Punjab & Haryana)
• Sachin Arora v. Manju Arora, 2023:DHC:3197 (Delhi)
• Sitanshi Sharma v. Vandana Sharma, CM(M) 626/2021 (Delhi)
• Tanvi Chaturvedi v. Smita Shrivastava, 2025:DHC:7474-DB (Delhi)
• Radeena D.N. v. Rahul K., 2020 SCC OnLine Ker 20535; K. Srinivasa Rao v. N. Naga Kamala Rani, CRP 2385/2018; Deepti Kapur v. Kunal Julka, 2020 SCC OnLine Del 672 (each as cited in Aparna Choudhrie Kala)

Statutes and Instruments

• Code of Civil Procedure, 1908: Section 151; Order I Rule 10(2); Order XI Rules 12 and 14; Order XVI
• Family Courts Act, 1984: Section 14; Hindu Marriage Act, 1955: Section 13(1)(i), (ia)
• Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005: Section 28(2)
• Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam, 2023: Sections 63, 128, 168; Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023: Section 94
• Indian Evidence Act, 1872 (repealed): Sections 65A, 65B, 122, 165; Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 (repealed): Section 91
• Indian Telegraph Act, 1885: Section 5(2)
• Department of Telecommunications, Unified Licence amendment of 21 December 2021: clause 39.20 and Part II, Chapter IX, para 7.1
• Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 and Rules, 2025

Written By: Inder Chand Jain
Ph no: 8279945021, Email: [email protected]

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