Dismissed¶¶29

Alok Daksh v. State of U.P. and Another

Allahabad HC24 Jan 2025A482/22873/2024

Case brief

AI extract

What is this about?

Section 482 Cr.P.C. application dismissed; Section 125 Cr.P.C. maintenance proceedings; summoning of call detail record (CDR) of wife's mobile numbers; Family Court No.4, Agra; matrimonial home; summary proceedings; social legislation for benefit of wives and children; Pradeep Radheshyam Vyas v. State of Gujarat; Sadiq @ Sahil v. State of NCT Delhi; Alok Daksh v. State of U.P. and Another; Poonam Daksh; Allahabad High Court; Raj Beer Singh, J.; Neutral Citation 2025:AHC:12583; order date 24.1.2025.

What did the court decide?

Proceedings under Section 125 Cr.P.C. are summary in nature, are not to be conducted like criminal trials, and are a measure of social legislation enacted for the benefit of wives and children; consequently, the cited case laws on the evidentiary value of call detail records have no applicability in such proceedings.

Alok Daksh vs State of U.P. and Another — Maintenance and Alimony | Allahabad HC (2025)

What the court decided

AI extract

Outcome

Dismissed

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Issue for consideration

Whether the Family Court's rejection of the applicant's application for summoning the call detail record of opposite party no.2's mobile phone numbers, in the Section 125 Cr.P.C. proceedings, suffers from illegality or perversity warranting interference under Section 482 Cr.P.C. +1 more

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Court's answer

The Family Court's observation that whether, at the relevant time, opposite party no.2 was at her matrimonial home or not can be decided on the basis of the evidence of the parties is correct and justified; the applicant's application was rejected by a reasoned order.

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Ratio / Principle

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Key takeaways

The impugned order does not suffer from any material illegality or abuse of the process of court so as to require interference by invoking the extraordinary powers under Section 482 Cr.P.C.; the application lacks merit.ratio¶¶28

Detailed headnote1 paragraphs

Allahabad High Court (Raj Beer Singh, J.) — Application under Section 482 Cr.P.C. dismissed. The applicant (husband) had sought summoning of the call detail records (CDRs) of opposite party no.2's (wife's) mobile numbers in a Section 125 Cr.P.C. maintenance case, to disprove her averments that her brother left her at his house on 18.12.2021 and that she was assaulted there on 01.12.2022. The Family Court No.4, Agra (order dated 06.06.2024) rejected the application, observing that a CDR shows only to whom calls were made and that whether the wife was at her matrimonial home at the relevant time is to be decided on the evidence of the parties. Upholding this, the High Court held that proceedings under Section 125 Cr.P.C. are summary in nature, are not to be conducted like criminal trials, and are a measure of social legislation for the benefit of wives and children; the case laws on the evidentiary value of CDRs quoted before it (Pradeep Radheshyam Vyas; Sadiq @ Sahil) have no applicability in such proceedings. The Family Court's observations were correct and justified, the impugned order suffered from no material illegality or abuse of process warranting Section 482 interference, and the application was dismissed.

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Neutral Citation No. - 2025:AHC:12583

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Court No. - 73

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Case :- APPLICATION U/S 482 No. - 22873 of 2024

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Applicant :- Alok Daksh Opposite Party :- State of U.P. and Another Counsel for Applicant :- Abhinav Gaur Counsel for Opposite Party :- Devesh Kumar Sharma,G.A.

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Hon'ble Raj Beer Singh,J.

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Heard learned counsel for the applicant and learned A.G.A. for the State. None has appeared on behalf of opposite party no.2 despite service of notice.

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This application under Section 482 Cr.P.C. has been preferred against the order dated 06.06.2024, passed by learned Additional Principal Judge, Family Court No.4, Agra, in Criminal Case No.183 of 2022 (Poonam Daksh Vs. Alok Daksh), under Section 125 Cr.P.C., Police Station- Fatehabad Hall, District- Agra, whereby the application filed by the applicant for summoning the call detail record of the mobile phone numbers of opposite party no.2 has been rejected.

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It has been submitted by learned counsel for the applicant that the aforesaid proceedings under Section 125 Cr.P.C. were initiated by opposite party no.2 against applicant. The applicant has filed application before the Family Court stating that in the application under Section 125 Cr.P.C. the opposite party no.2 has made false averment that her brother has left her on 18.12.2021 at the house of applicant and on 01.12.2022 she was assaulted there. It was submitted that the said averments were false and the same can very well be proved by the call detail record of the mobile phones of the opposite party no.2 but the application of applicant has been

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rejected by the Family Court without considering relevant facts and position of law. The observations of learned Family Court that by call detail record only it can be ascertained that to whom call has been made, is incorrect. In fact the address of the consumer of mobile phone can also be ascertained by the call detail record of mobile phone. Learned counsel has referred case of Pradeep Radheshyam Vyas Vs. State of Gujarat & 4 others [Special Criminal Application (Direction) No.1815 of 2016], decided on 21.03.2017, in support of his contentions. Referring to facts of the matter, it was submitted that impugned order is against facts and law and thus liable to be set aside.

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Learned counsel for the opposite party no.2 has opposed the application and submitted that the applicant has moved the aforesaid application with intention to delay the proceedings. The applicant is continuously delaying the said proceedings. It was submitted that there is no illegality or perversity in the impugned order.

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I have considered the rival submissions and perused the record.

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In case of Pradeep Radheshyam Vyas (supra), in Para No.20, the Hon'ble Apex Court has held as under:-

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"20. The CDRs being important and vital link in establishing various details are ordinarily being collected by the Investigating Agency in most of the criminal matters.

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20.1 Collecting of CDRs is found to be a very useful tool to prove whereabouts of parties and also to link and resolve many unexplained links. CDRs are held to be the effective tool by a Division Bench of this Court in the case of State of Gujarat v. Sureshkumar alias Tino Ranjansinh Baria and another, while dealing with Criminal Miscellaneous

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Application No.8036 of 2014, by holding thus :

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"It would be apt to refer to certain vital details CDR, which known as Call detail record as also Call Data record, available on the internet [courtesy Wikipedia ]. The CDR contains data fields that describe a specific instance of telecommunication transaction minus the content of that transaction. CDR contains attributes, such as [a] calling party; [b] called party; [c] date and time; [e] call duration; [f] billing phone number that is charged for the call; [g] identification of the telephone exchange; [h] a unique sequence number identifying the record; [i] additional digits on the called number, used to route the call; [j] result of the call ie., whether the same was connected or not; [k] the route by which call left the exchange; [l] call type [ie., voice, SMS, etc.].

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Call data records also serve a variety of functions. For telephone service providers, they are critical to the production of revenue. For law enforcement, CDRs provide a wealth of information that

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can help to identify suspects, in that they can reveal details as to an individual's relationships with associates, communication and behavior patterns and even location data that can establish the whereabouts of an individual during the entirety of the call. For companies with PBX telephone systems, CDRs provide a means of tracking long distance access, can monitor telephone usage by department; including listing of incoming and outgoing calls.

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can help to identify suspects, in that they can reveal details as to an individual's relationships with associates, communication establish the whereabouts of an

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Relevant would be also to refer to Mobile Phone Tracking and phone positioning briefly at this stage.

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The mobile phone tracking refers to attaining of the current position of a mobile phone, stationary or moving. Localization may occur either via multi lateration of radio signals between the radio towers of the network and the phone or simply via GPS. To locate the phone using multilateration of radio signals, it must emit atleast the roaming signal to contact the next nearby antenna tower, but the process does not require an active call. GSM is based on the signal to nearby antenna masts. Mobile positioning includes locationsbased services that disclose the actual coordinates of a mobile phone bearers and it is the technology used by telecommunication companies to approximate the location of a mobile phone and thereby also its user. It is more properly termed as locating rather than positioning. The technology of locating is based on measuring power levels and antenna patterns and uses the concept that a powered mobile phone always communicates wirelessly with one of the closest base stations, so knowledge of the location of the base station implies the cell phone is nearby. Whereas, the advanced systems determine the sector in which the mobile phone resides and roughly estimate also the distance to the base station. Further proximation can be done by interpolating the signals between adjacent antenna towers. Qualified services may achieve a precision of down to 50 meters in urban areas, where mobile traffic and density of antenna towers is sufficiently high. Rural and desolate areas may see miles between base stations and therefore possibly determine locations a little less precisely.

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In order to route calls to a phone, the cell towers listen for a signal sent from the phone and negotiate which tower is best able to communicate with the phone. As the phone changes location, the antenna towers monitor the signals and phone is roamed to an adjacent tower as appropriate. By comparing the relative signal strength from multiple antenna towers, a general location of a phone can be roughly determined. Other means make use of the antenna pattern, which supports angular determination and phase discrimination. Newer phones may also allow the tracking of the phone even when turned on and not active in a telephone call. In a simpler language, it can be said that the technology can be best put to use in the form of CDRs which contains data fields describing various details, which also includes not only the phone number of the subscriber originating the call and the phone number receiving such call etc., but, the details with regard to the individual's relationships with associates, the behavior patterns and the whereabouts of an individual during the entirety of the call.

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The whole purpose of CDR is not only to establish the number of phone calls which may be a very strong circumstance to establish their intimacy or behavioral conduct. Beyond that, such potential evidence also can throw light on the location of the mobile phone and in turn many a times, the position and whereabouts of the person using them with the aid of mobile phone tracking and phone positioning, location of mobile phone and its user is feasible. As the mobile phone ordinarily communicates wirelessly with the closest base station. In other words, ordinarily, signal is made available to a mobile phone from the nearest Mobile tower. In the event of any congestion or excessive rush on such mobile tower, there is an inbuilt mechanism of automatic shifting over to the next tower and if access is also not feasible there, to the third available tower. This being largely a scientific evidence it may have a material bearing on the issue, and therefore, if such evidence is established scientifically before the Court concerned, missing link can be provided which more often than not get missed for want of availability of credible eyewitnesses. We have noticed that in most of the matters these days, scientific and technical evidence in the form of Call Data Record is evident. However, its better and further use for the purpose of revealing and establishing the truth is restricted by not examining any witness nor bringing on record the situation of the mobile towers. Such kind of evidence, more particularly in case of circumstantial evidence will be extremely useful and may not allow the truth to escape, as the entire thrust of every criminal trial is to reach to the truth."

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Similarly in case of Sadiq @ Sahil Vs. State of NCT Delhi , [Bail Application No.963 of 2022], decided on 07.12.2022, in Para No.7.2, the Hon'ble Apex Court has held as under:-

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7.2 Status report also mentions that the clothes worn by the petitioner during riots have been recovered and are similar to the ones seen in the CCTV footages. The CDR of the petitioner‟s mobile number proves his location at the spot during riots. The petitioner‟s identity is also confirmed by Constable Sunil in his statement U/s 161 Cr.P.C recorded on 26.03.2020.

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In the instant matter, the perusal of record shows that opposite party no.2 has filed the aforesaid case against applicant under Section 125 Cr.P.C. in the year 2022. During pendency of the case, the applicant has moved an application before the Family Court

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alleging that the opposite party no.2 has made false averment in plaint that her brother has left her on 18.12.2021 at the house of applicant and on 01.12.2022 she was assaulted there and thus the call detail record of mobile phone of opposite party no.2 be summoned. That application has been rejected by the Family Court vide impugned order dated 06.06.2024, by observing that by call detail record only it can be determined as to whom the call has been made by the consumer of phone. The Family Court has also observed that whether at the relevant time the opposite party no.2 was at her matrimonial home or not, that can be decided on the basis of evidence of the parties. It would be pertinent to mention that proceedings under Section 125 Cr.P.C. are summary in nature and the same are not to be conducted like the criminal trials. These provisions are measure of social legislation and enacted for the benefit of wives and children. In proceedings under Section 125 Cr.P.C., the aforesaid case laws would have no applicability. In view of attending facts of the matter, the observations of Family Court that whether at the relevant time, the opposite party no.2 was at her matrimonial home or not, can be decided by the evidence of the parties, is correct and justified. The application of applicant has been rejected by the Family Court by a reasoned order.

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In view of facts of the matter, it can not be said that impugned order is suffering from any such material illegality or abuse of the process of court, so as to require any interference by invoking extraordinary powers under Section 482 Cr.P.C. The application under Section 482 Cr.P.C. lacks merit and thus, liable to be dismissed.

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The application u/s 482 Cr.P.C. is hereby dismissed .

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Order Date :- 24.1.2025//'SP'/-

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Digitally signed by :- SANDEEP PAL High Court of Judicature at Allahabad

Alok Daksh v. State of U.P. and Another

Case brief

What is this about?

What did the court decide?

Alok Daksh v. State of U.P. and Another

Case brief

What is this about?

What did the court decide?

What the court decided

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