In this series, we will present a case to you. You be the judge. You don’t need to know the law or apply it. What judgement will you give, as a citizen member of the jury, and why? You can express your ideas in the comments section.
Tara is a pesky 10-year-old who lives in a middle class colony in Dahisar, Mumbai. In this colony, windows look into each other’s houses and one can see into other houses quite clearly while ascending or descending the staircase too.
Tara’s hobby is “Making homemade videos”. Put simply, she likes to use the zoom feature on her phone and take spy videos of others in their homes without their knowledge or consent.
One day, she took a video of a private conversation between members of a family and one more video of a confidential nature. Both the conversation and the action were private and were being done in the houses of her neighbours.
Pankit, her elder brother, who is always looking for mischief, found both these videos on her phone and immediately sent them to all his friends. He sent the video of the family to all the uncles and aunties of the building, and the other video to all his friends.
When the videos went viral, the family had to face significant public outrage. Some things that were said in anger during the video were interpreted out of context and the family was even asked to vacate their flat on the basis of this video!
The other video also created troubles for the household.
Both videos were deliberately made viral by a neighbour within the building on account of his personal issues with both residents. This neighbour, lets call him Mr. A, is not related to Tara in any way. He got hold of the videos through Tara’s brother, Pankit.
The two affected families tried to find the source of the videos and realised that Tara was behind the videos.
They went to the police to lodge an FIR. The police told them that the videos come under freedom of speech and cannot be stopped.
They then went to a lawyer, who told them that since they did not object to violation of privacy the first time they saw the videos, the videos are now covered under freedom of speech and cannot be censored. They are, however, free to make another video rebutting or explaining the first 2 videos.
The families filed a case in the local Nyaya Adalat anyway. Nyaya Adalat is a local court that tries to resolve issues at the local level.
You are the judge of the Nyaya Adalat.
What is your decision?