Indian Evidence Act, 1872 / Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam, 2023
What the exam tests
Evidence questions test relevance, admissibility, modes of proof, burden of proof and presumptions, with growing weight on electronic records. The Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam, 2023 (170 sections) replaced the Evidence Act, 1872 (167 sections) on 1 July 2024.
Core rules
- Relevance is the gatekeeper: facts must be connected under the relevancy provisions; a relevant fact may still be excluded by an exclusionary rule.
- Confessions: a confession to a police officer is not proved, and a confession in police custody is inadmissible unless made in the immediate presence of a Magistrate. The discovery rule survives inside the confession provision of the BSA, permitting so much of the information as distinctly relates to the fact discovered.
- Electronic records must satisfy Section 63 BSA (formerly Section 65B): a certificate from the person in charge of the device or network, and an expert, identifying the record, describing the device, and giving the hash value.
- Presumptions: dowry death carries a statutory presumption; documents thirty years old are presumed genuine; Section 4 BSA classifies may presume, shall presume and conclusive proof.
- Contradiction: a witness may be contradicted by his previous statement, and the court may permit the party calling a witness to cross-examine him.
Worked example
In a cheating trial the prosecution produces WhatsApp chats from a seized phone. Without the Section 63(4) certificate the printout is inadmissible as secondary electronic evidence; the defect can be cured by producing the certificate at a later stage, as the Supreme Court permitted in Ravinder Singh v. State of Punjab.
Traps
Treating a Section 161 statement as substantive evidence; assuming the certificate is a mere formality when it must also carry the hash value; and forgetting that dying declarations need no corroboration if found truthful, though the court must scrutinise them with care.