In a sharp rebuke that cut through the fog of patriarchal entitlement, the Allahabad High Court made it unmistakably clear: a wedding ring does not grant ownership.
Presiding over a case that peeled back the layers of marital privacy and digital consent, Justice Vinod Diwakar refused to quash criminal proceedings against a man accused of uploading an intimate video of himself and his wife to Facebook—without her consent.
The Court was unflinching in its stance. “Marriage does not grant a husband ownership or control over his wife,” the judge stated, adding that the woman remains “an individual with her own rights, desires, and agency.”
The case stems from proceedings pending since 2022 in Mirzapur, where the husband was booked under Section 67 of the Information Technology Act. His legal team argued that since the act occurred between a married couple, no criminality was involved. They further claimed the video might not have even been uploaded by him, and that the issue could be “settled.”
But the Court wasn’t buying it.
The prosecution painted a grim picture—alleging that the man secretly filmed the private moment using his mobile phone and went on to post it online, not just for public view but also sent it to the wife’s cousin and others in the village.
Justice Diwakar described the act as a profound betrayal. “This is a grave violation of the inherent confidentiality that defines the bond between husband and wife,” he said. The marriage bond, the Court stressed, does not offer sanctuary to such acts. On the contrary, they pierce the very trust that marriage is supposed to uphold.
The attempt to portray the proceedings as malicious or vengeful was also dismissed. The Court concluded there was no indication that the charges were cooked up or filed with an ulterior motive.
With that, the husband’s plea to make the case disappear was squarely rejected.
In a world where digital violations increasingly blur personal boundaries, the judgment draws a firm line: intimacy is not possession—and trust is not a license to trespass.
