The court upheld the Family Court's rejection of an application to summon call detail records, affirming that proceedings under Section 125 Cr.P.C. are summary in nature and not akin to criminal trials.

Hon'ble Raj Beer Singh,J.

1. Heard learned counsel for the applicant and learned A.G.A. for the State. None has appeared on behalf of opposite party no.2 despite service of notice.

2. This application under Section 482 Cr.P.C . has been preferred against the order dated 06.06.2024, passed by learned Additional Principal Judge, Family Court No.4, Agra, in Criminal Case No.183 of 2022 (Poonam Daksh Vs. Alok Daksh), under Section 125 Cr.P.C ., Police Station- Fatehabad Hall, District- Agra, whereby the application filed by the applicant for summoning the call detail record of the mobile phone numbers of opposite party no.2 has been rejected.

3. It has been submitted by learned counsel for the applicant that the aforesaid proceedings under Section 125 Cr.P.C . were initiated by opposite party no.2 against applicant. The applicant has filed application before the Family Court stating that in the application under Section 125 Cr.P.C . the opposite party no.2 has made false averment that her brother has left her on 18.12.2021 at the house of applicant and on 01.12.2022 she was assaulted there. It was submitted that the said averments were false and the same can very well be proved by the call detail record of the mobile phones of the opposite party no.2 but the application of applicant has been rejected by the Family Court without considering relevant facts and position of law. The observations of learned Family Court that by call detail record only it can be ascertained that to whom call has been made, is incorrect. In fact the address of the consumer of mobile phone can also be ascertained by the call detail record of mobile phone. Learned counsel has referred case of Pradeep Radheshyam Vyas Vs. State of Gujarat & 4 others [Special Criminal Application (Direction) No.1815 of 2016], decided on 21.03.2017, in support of his contentions. Referring to facts of the matter, it was submitted that impugned order is against facts and law and thus liable to be set aside.

4. Learned counsel for the opposite party no.2 has opposed the application and submitted that the applicant has moved the aforesaid application with intention to delay the proceedings. The applicant is continuously delaying the said proceedings. It was submitted that there is no illegality or perversity in the impugned order.

5. I have considered the rival submissions and perused the record.

6. In case of Pradeep Radheshyam Vyas (supra), in Para No.20, the Hon'ble Apex Court has held as under:-

"20. The CDRs being important and vital link in establishing various details are ordinarily being collected by the Investigating Agency in most of the criminal matters.

20.1 Collecting of CDRs is found to be a very useful tool to prove whereabouts of parties and also to link and resolve many unexplained links. CDRs are held to be the effective tool by a Division Bench of this Court in the case of State of Gujarat v. Sureshkumar alias Tino Ranjansinh Baria and another, while dealing with Criminal Miscellaneous Application No.8036 of 2014, by holding thus :

"It would be apt to refer to certain vital details CDR, which known as Call detail record as also Call Data record, available on the internet [courtesy Wikipedia ]. The CDR contains data fields that describe a specific instance of telecommunication transaction minus the content of that transaction. CDR contains attributes, such as [a] calling party; [b] called party; [c] date and time; [e] call duration; [f] billing phone number that is charged for the call; [g] identification of the telephone exchange; [h] a unique sequence number identifying the record; [i] additional digits on the called number, used to route the call; [j] result of the call ie., whether the same was connected or not; [k] the route by which call left the exchange; [l] call type [ie., voice, SMS, etc.].

Call data records also serve a variety of functions. For telephone service providers, they are critical to the production of revenue. For law enforcement, CDRs provide a wea