For spying on ex-wife's phone, man told to pay Rs 50,000

She stated in her complaint that she had shared her Facebook account and email account passwords with her husband when their relation was good

He spied on his ex-wive's phone and for this he was fined Rs 50,000. The cyber adjudicator at West Bengal ordered the man to pay the fine for snooping into his estranged wife's mobile calls and messages.

The state IT secretary, in his ex-officio position as the cyber adjudicator in West Bengal, has ordered the man to pay a compensation for illegally spying on his estranged wife's mobile phone. The man was found guilty under sections 43(a), (b), 66(C) and 72 of the Information Technology Act, 2000 (as amended till date) for breaching online privacy. Under provisions of the Act, an adjudicator can order a maximum compensation of Rs 5 crore.

The woman, in her complaint had claimed that her estranged husband had filed a matrimonial suit before the Howrah civil court seeking divorce in June 2014.

They had got married in May 2013, but the relationship turned sour within a few months over the man's alleged suspicions on his wife. She stated in her complaint that she had shared her Facebook account and email account passwords with her husband when their relation was good and claimed that on one occasion the husband had taken her mobile phone and installed a malware, without her knowledge, through which he could access all calls and messages from and to her phone.

The adjudicator, in his order, noted that the man had himself admitted to have installed a software on the phone belonging to the complainant and accessed details of incoming and outgoing calls and messages from her mobile phone without her knowledge.

OneIndia News