Privacy During A Pandemic

In 2017, the Supreme Court fast-delivered one of the most important judgments, asserting that the right to privacy is a fundamental right. Now, amid a raging pandemic, there is a perceptible difference in the way individual privacy is treated by authorities at large, and once again, the matter has gone to court

- Sujit Bhar

ON August 24, 2017, the Supreme Court delivered one of the most important judgments in recent memory, ruling that the right to privacy is a fundamental right. On that day, the then Chief Justice of India, JS Khehar, addressed the assembled legal luminaries present in court and said: “We are all extremely grateful to all of you for addressing us, for the kind of research you all have done. Decision in MP Sharma stands overruled. Khatam Singh is overruled. Right to privacy is an integral part of Articles 14 and 19. Right to privacy is a fundamental right. That is the final order.”

It must be recollected that unlike the triple talaq (talaq-e-biddat) issue, there was no ambiguity in this order, neither any dissension. All the nine judges of the apex court—CJI Khehar and Justices J Chelames war, SA Bobde, RK Agrawal, Rohinton Fali Nariman, Abhay Manohar Sapre, DY Chandra Chud, Sanjay Kishan Kaul and S Abdul Nazeer—were unanimous in declaring privacy a fundamental right.

Fast forward to September-end, 2020. Amid a raging pandemic, one notices little perceptible difference in the way individual privacy is treated by the authorities at large. This has been specifically evident in the way confirmed Covid cases have been publicly named and publicised and, in the process, shamed. Posters are stuck outside houses of persons who have tested positive and are in home isolation. Names of such people have been circulated to respective neighbourhood watch committees and Resident Welfare Associations (RWAs). The notices are a crude demonstration of a desensitised system that has no qualms about allowing such RWAs to browbeat into submission a rather ill person and his/her worried family.