NEW DELHI: The Delhi high court has refused to initiate contempt proceedings against a husband and his lawyers for filing the wife’s intimate photographs, unredacted, with a divorce petition, but the court called this act a “grave lapse.“Justice Sachin Datta was hearing a plea by the wife alleging that the husband and his advocates had violated a 2015 Delhi high court judgment, which requires parties in matrimonial cases to seek the court’s permission before placing sensitive personal material on record, and to file it in a sealed cover.What was the issueThe couple married in February 2022, and the marriage broke down soon after. In August 2023, the wife filed a domestic violence complaint against the husband, and weeks later he filed for divorce before the family court.The wife said that the divorce petition included photographs showing her private body parts — allegedly taken from a WhatsApp chat between the husband and her doctor.These photos were put on record openly, “without redaction and without the protection of a sealed cover,” breaking the rules set out in the 2015 judgment.Her complaint under the Domestic Violence Act was rejected by the family court in January 2024. The court said she hadn’t explained how filing the photos broke that particular law. She then went to the high court asking for contempt action.What the court SaidThe husband and his lawyers said they didn’t know about the 2015 judgment — it had simply “escaped their notice.” They said sorry without any conditions attached, and also asked the family court to seal the photographs.“Apart from tendering an unconditional apology in these proceedings and also during the course of hearing, it transpires that the respondents have filed an application before the learned Family Court seeking that the offending documents/photographs be placed in a sealed cover,” the court notedJustice Datta pointed out that the 2015 judgment came from a completely different case, and there was nothing to show the husband and lawyers had knowingly broken its rules. Without proof that they knew and still ignored the order, there’s no contempt.The court called filing the photos “a significant lapse,” saying that even basic common sense should have told them to file such material in a sealed cover, with the person’s identity hidden, and only after asking the court’s permission.It further held the two lawyers responsible for the mistake and warned them to be more careful in future. The court also said that no lawyer’s duty to their client can ever justify hurting the dignity of the other side.The judge noted that the wife, too, had filed photos and videos of the husband to make him look bad. He said the two aren’t equally serious, but warned that divorce cases shouldn’t turn into fights where both sides use private photos and videos as weapons against each other.The court then accepted the apology and didn’t punish anyone for contempt. But it allowed the wife to ask the family court to hide her identity, and ordered the photos taken off the open case file.“Remove the photographs/documents appearing at page no. 105- 115 of the Divorce Petition (HMA Petition No.2578/2023) together with every copy thereof on record, whether in physical or in any electronic form, from the open record and place them in sealed cover, to be opened only under court orders and only to the extent necessary for adjudication,” the court said.The husband and his lawyers were told not to share the photos in any way, and the High Court said it would refer to the wife only by her initials going forward. With that, the case was closed.
