Kerala's leader of Opposition Ramesh Chennithala has approached the High Court against the circular that allows police to collect Call Data Records of COVID-19 patients. The writ petition, filed as Public Interest Litigation (PIL), is 'for and on behalf of those positive COVID-19 pandemic patients who are now undergoing quarantine at their homes as well as at various hospitals, whose Call Data Records (CDR) are being collected by police on the strength of a circular dated 11th August 2020'.
The circular, released by the State Police Chief Lokanath Behera on Wednesday to all senior police officials, stated that the ADGP (Intelligence) and their headquarters should begin collecting CDRs from BSNL and also take it up with Vodafone.
Chennithala's petition states that the police have been collecting CDRs of COVID-19 patients 'in massive numbers from telecom companies' even before issuing the circular and 'without the consent or knowledge of COVID-19 patients'. He calls it a total violation of the fundamental rights of privacy guaranteed under Article 21 of the Constitution.
The petition points out that the state has to ensure the fundamental rights of all citizens 'including those who are undergoing home isolation in connection with' COVID-19 and that patients are protected 'particularly when they are in a very vulnerable situation'.
Chennithala argues in his petition that neither of the respondents - the State of Kerala as well as the State Police Chief -- have the right or authority to collect CDRs of these patients, violating their right of privacy, and calls the action 'illegal, void and unenforceable'. He further claims that the CDRs are stored by an unknown agency without anonymising them. There is every chance of misuse by undesirable elements for 'commercial gain and personal pecuniary advantage', it says.
If the sole purpose was contact-tracing, the tower location of the mobile phones of COVID-19 patients would have served the purpose and CDR details are unnecessary, says the PIL.
Submitting the Supreme Court verdict in the Justice Puttaswamy case, the petition says that 'even in a health emergency or war emergency it is not an excuse to trample on the rights under Art.21 of the Constitution.' It is also argued that the police's issue of a press note justifying its circular using the same Justice Puttaswamy case is not valid.