Mumbai : A post about a hidden camera in a shared living room has reopened an old question -- how far can a landlord interfere in a home he no longer fully controls?
Here's what two Mumbai lawyers have to say.
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A dispute over a CCTV camera installed inside the living room of a Mumbai rental accommodation -- the tenant's account went viral has snowballed into a wider conversation about privacy, consent and the limits of a landlord's authority.
A Mumbai PG tenant alleged that her landlord installed a CCTV camera inside the shared living room of a flat occupied by seven women without obtaining their consent.
Advocate Abha Singh said there is no general police requirement for landlords to install CCTV cameras inside rented living spaces.
She added that tenants can approach the police to seek removal of an unauthorised camera.
Advocate Lara Jesani called the surveillance an invasion of privacy and said renting out a property does not give a landlord the authority to monitor the people living there.
Both lawyers linked the tenants' right to privacy to the Supreme Court's 2017 Puttaswamy judgment; Jesani also pointed out that, depending on the facts, it could be possible voyeurism under Section 66E of the IT Act.
The lawyers also criticised the landlord's alleged instruction that the women 'dress decently', describing it as moral policing and stressing that a landlord's authority does not extend to controlling the tenants' personal choices inside their living space.
The post was shared on r/mumbai by a user going by the handle, who said she shares a 3BHK paying guest accommodation in Mumbai with six other women -- a mix of college students and young working professionals.
She began her post with the line, 'We're 7 girls living in a PG.' The landlord had installed a CCTV camera inside their shared living room without asking their permission first.
He knocked on their door one morning to inform them of the installation -- a sequence of events that led her to question, in her post, how being informed about the camera after it was already up could count as consent.
She went on to describe how the landlord defended the move by citing a supposed police requirement and how her attempt to negotiate -- she even suggested placing the camera outside the flat entrance instead of inside the living room -- was turned down.
The post also raised the question of whether young women living away from home for study or work should have to accept restrictions from a landlord simply because of their age or circumstances; it also underlined the landlord's additional instruction that the residents 'dress decently' in the space now under watch.
The post has since gathered significant traction, with many commenters calling for police intervention and questioning whether a landlord can lawfully place a CCTV camera in a tenant's private living quarters at all.
Mid-Day was among the first publications to report on it (external link); the claims in the original post remain those of the tenant involved and have not been independently verified.
We put the same question to two Mumbai-based lawyers: Is there any law that lets a landlord do this?
Advocate and social activist Abha Singh was blunt when asked whether any rule requires a camera inside a shared living space. "You don't have to put a CCTV camera in the common room," she said. "There is no ruling like that. He's just making it up."
On the "police requirement" the landlord is said to have cited, Singh was equally dismissive, saying no such mandate exists and that police are "not allowed at all" to demand household surveillance of this kind.
The only context in which cameras are typically permitted inside a home's common areas, she explained, is when a court has specifically ordered it -- she pointed to domestic-violence cases where a camera in a shared space is sometimes court-mandated to protect a complainant; it is, she added, a narrow exception rather than the rule.
Singh grounded the tenants' position in the right to privacy recognised by the Supreme Court's nine-judge bench in the Puttaswamy verdict and said the installation could also raise questions of voyeurism if the women were unaware of the camera before it went up.
She was more circumspect, however, on whether the act by itself amounts to a standalone criminal offence. Without an element like intimidation, she said, simply installing an unauthorised camera in a common area may not cleanly fit an existing offence, though residents could still lodge a police complaint asking that it be removed and that a formal request would typically be enough to have it taken down.
If the facts could be shown to involve intimidation -- the sense of being watched and controlled -- it strengthens the case considerably, she added.
She also drew a comparison to disputes she has seen in the past over footage from common areas such as building lifts and halls, where residents have argued that access to such footage should not rest with one party alone.
"Wherever such common things are placed, everybody can go and see there," she said, of how shared-space CCTV access ought to work.
Advocate Lara Jesani: 'You cannot invade a woman's privacy'
"No law gives a landlord that right," says Mumbai-based advocate Lara Jesani, who has practised in Indian courts for 15 years.
She called the situation a clear case overreach when asked whether any law entitles a landlord to install cameras inside a tenant's private living space.
"If they are renting it out, then how can they put a CCTV camera inside the apartment?" she asked, adding that she had never come across any legal provision -- police-mandated or otherwise -- that requires a landlord to keep a camera trained on a rented interior.
On the claim that police guidelines demanded it, she was equally direct -- the tenants, she suggested, would do well to get the police on record stating plainly that no such requirement exists.
Jesani was unambiguous about how such surveillance ought to be characterised. "This is a kind of voyeurism," she said, pointing out that filming someone in their intimate/private space without consent is a criminal offence under the IT Act, not merely a grey area of landlord-tenant conduct.
This kind of filming that occurs without a woman's knowledge or agreement, she explained, falls squarely within that provision.
On the question of what authority a landlord retains once he has rented out a room or flat, Jesani was categorical -- none that extends to surveillance.
A lease or leave-and-license arrangement gives occupation rights to the tenant, she said, and does not entitle the owner to monitor the people living there.
"That doesn't give him the authority to violate an individual's right," she said, noting that a license granted under law cannot later be used to justify invading the licensee's privacy.
She was equally critical of the instruction to "dress decently" inside what is, functionally, the tenants' own living room.
"With what authority can they (the landlord in this case) do that?" she asked, describing the directive as symptomatic of a broader pattern of moral policing that has no legal basis.
She recalled having delivered sensitisation sessions for police personnel on precisely this issue, in the context of moral-policing raids on adult couples in hotels. "No one can do it," she said of such policing, "not even the police."
What recourse do the tenants have?
Asked what steps the residents could take, Jesani said the first and most important move would be to file an FIR against the landlord -- for harassment and for attempting to film them without consent, both of which she said constitute offences that obligate police action once reported.
She flagged Section 66E of the IT Act as the relevant voyeurism provision, while noting that "outraging modesty" charges typically require an element of physical contact.
Obscenity- and stalking-related provisions under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, she said, could also potentially come into play depending on what an investigation reveals and whether the footage has been disseminated -- pointing out that the case raises, once again, a question of women's safety that the police must take seriously.
Singh's reading was more cautious on the criminal-complaint route taken in isolation. Installing an unauthorised camera in a common area, she said, may not by itself cleanly fit an existing offence -- but residents could still approach the police to have it removed. The case strengthens considerably if it can be framed around intimidation rather than the installation alone.
Both lawyers anchored the tenants' position in the right to privacy affirmed by the Supreme Court's 2017 Puttaswamy verdict, which recognised privacy as a fundamental right under the Constitution.
Jesani argued that covert surveillance of this kind runs directly against those constitutional protections, as well as the tenants' right to choice and personal liberty.
Beyond the criminal-law angle, she framed the episode as a breach of the basic contractual understanding between landlord and tenant since installing a hidden camera without informing residents before they signed on and paid rent undermines the very terms on which the accommodation was let out.
"This is a completely gross case," she said, adding that, beyond legal remedies, the matter also warranted social censure of the landlord's conduct.
