The government on Wednesday informed a Division Bench of the Kerala High Court that to find out the location of COVID patients, the police require only the tower details from where the calls are made and received and not more than that.
The government submitted that the call records received to that extent were erased after 14 days of the quarantine period.
The submissions were made by Additional Advocate General K.K. Ravindranath when a public interest litigation by Leader of the Opposition Ramesh Chennithala challenging a circular by State Police Chief Loknath Behera on collection of call data records (CDR) of COVID-19 positive persons came up before the Bench.
T. Asaf Ali, counsel for Mr. Chennithala, submitted that the police were collecting CDRs of COVID patients and those under quarantine. He contended that under the guise of preventing the spread of the pandemic, the police could collect all details of call records of anybody, infringing the right of privacy guaranteed under Article 21 of the Constitution. This was an illegal expansion of police powers, he added.
The Bench comprising Chief Justice S. Manikumar and Justice Shaji P.Chaly, while directing the government to file a statement in response to the petition, observed that the circular had been issued on a specific objective of COVID-19 unlock 3.0. Prima facie all clauses in the circular deal only with COVID-19, its spread, and prevention.
Mr. Chennithala sought to quash the State Police Chief’s circular. The court posted the petition to August 21 for further hearing.
