Hyderabad, July 13 -- The Telangana High Court has ruled that secretly recording a spouse's phone calls without their consent breaches the fundamental right to privacy and cannot be used as evidence in matrimonial cases, a position that runs contrary to the Supreme Court's verdict a year earlier, holding that such recordings are admissible in matrimonial disputes.

Justice Namavarapu Rajeshwar Rao, dismissing two civil revision petitions on July 11, held that recording a spouse's conversations without consent amounts to a violation of the right to privacy under Article 21 of the Constitution, and that such recordings are inadmissible in the absence of consent.

The petitions had been filed by a husband challenging a trial court's refusal ...