In an era when civil and political rights have been shrinking gradually, we have witnessed a welcome intervention by the Supreme Court. A 3-member bench of the High Court Division of the Supreme Court has said the practice of collection of call list/audio discussion from public/private phone companies without any formal requisition and formal seizure, and also without the knowledge of the subscriber must be stopped. Three justices of the bench, unanimously and without any ambiguity, have said the citizens’ right to privacy in correspondence and other means of communication is guaranteed under article 43 of the Constitution which cannot be easily violated at the whims of any interested quarter.   The judgement was the outcome of a death reference and two appeals one criminal and the other a jail appeal in a case of the killing of a seven-year old child. In the original criminal case, the prosecution significantly relied on the alleged suspects’ call lists and records, which wer...