19th October 2014, I can
never forget this date; a client approached me and told he is booked under cybercrime for
seeking divorce as her wife was cheating upon him …!
On discussion further in detail, I
discovered he (husband) had accessed her (wifes) emails and whatsapp messages
without her consent (it’s obvious, how will she give him consent to access her
private data). He was already a victim of domestic violence; he comes from a
middleclass family, retail merchant from Indore, married to a girl working for IT
Company in Bangalore. He did suspect her wife’s relationship with her colleague
who often travelled for short term IT consulting assignments together out of
India…, he was able to successfully gather evidence out of their emails /
whatsapp messages and some objectionable photographs in compromising position
that made his case strong to seek divorce. Well unlike him there are many other
people during the divorce proceedings often track their spouses email or
personal chats, hack their mobiles / computers to gather evidence and produce
it in the court of law to get rid of the wedlock.
An estimated 55,000 couples are
waiting for divorce in India. Bangalore alone has more than 9000 cases pending
in the family court with couples jostling to sort out matrimonial issues. Every
year 500+ new cases are filed and is increasing year on year with as many as 60
– 70 cases come up for hearing every day, contested divorce cases that need
evidence to be produced are more complex, at least 64% of the cases are contested on grounds of Adultery,
Cruelty and Infidelity which needs to be proven, the liability is upon the
person who has laid the allegations to prove his/her spouse guilty.
We live in an Internet-based urban social
order, substantiation and proofs of disloyalty, perfidy, adultery, cheating or
other such grounds for divorce are usually digital and stored on one’s laptop/desktop,
smartphones or other handheld devices, and often the spouses try to find the evidence
by ‘hacking‘ each other’s digital devices, email, whatsapp / chat accounts etc….
What actually happens is husband and
wife often share their passwords with each other when life is hunky-dory and all
is going good in their relationship, things go wrong and they forget to change
the passwords or often don’t secure their devices, this makes it easy for the
information to be accessed leaving them disreputable. Only after they realize
that the confidential or private information is stolen the vengeance or guilt
invokes an opportunity to knock the doors of a lawyer and file a cyber-crime suit
out of vengeance.
While many times its evidence
gathering that provokes the couple to indulge in the act of hacking private
information Cyber-crime is not limited to hacking, there are cases of vengeance
that are growing. I remember a few cases that my clients have brought up during
the divorce proceedings where their husbands have hacked the Facebook and other
social media accounts and posted disgraceful content on their wall and shared
with their social circle with an intention to malign their social image purely
blindsided by the divorce proceedings. Few of my clients acknowledge that they
did engage in such activity only with an intention to ensure they get the child
custody and becomes easy to prove their spouse cannot take care of the child assassinating
his/he character.
Few other cases that are on a raise
now-a-days are when husband / wife creates a fake profile of their wife /
husband and connects with their social circle as thou he/she posting and
messaging, runs a parallel account without his/her knowledge and turns mischievous
to an extent that harms the social image and again such acts are done with an intention
of child custody or alimony etc…
I strongly censure such activities of
hacking, people who are unaware my wish to go thru the Information Technology
act following the link http://meity.gov.in/content/information-technology-act,
Section 65 to Section 74 describes offenses and penalties for the same.
Offenses punishable with imprisonment of 3 years and above are cognizable. (Generally,
cognizable offence means a police officer has the authority to make an arrest
without a warrant and to start an investigation with or without the permission
of a court. By contrast, in the case of a non-cognizable offence, a police
officer does not have the authority to make an arrest without a warrant and an
investigation cannot be initiated without a court order.)
The key takeaway form this blog is to
ensure one does not invite further trouble in his/her divorce case by indulging
into an activity of hacking to gather evidence, there are many ethical ways of
gathering digital evidence thou, few of my clients have engaged the professional
services of detective agencies for the same, there is a provision for the victim
to seek the intervention from the court to intervene in evidence gathering. If
nothing exists at all and one still needs to prove his / her innocence or guilt
one can demand a lie detector test. In fact there are many more ways, but the eagerness
to prove one right or wrong forces you to hack the information which may lead
you into trouble …
You may wish to write into me at lawyersonia@gmail.com or call me at
+91 984 594 4896 for guidance and understand various legal options before trying to
be impulsive and try hack your spouses’ inbox.
