Supreme Court clarifies on Evidentiary Aspects

Ever since ITA 2000 became a law in India (17th October 2000), discussions are being held on the admissibility of electronic evidence in a Court of law. Section 65B of the Indian Evidence Act laid down the procedure by which an electronic document may be considered as “Admissible”.

Naavi.org has clarified this many times and since around 2002 maintains a service “Cyber Evidence Archival Center” providing certified copies of electronic document in print form with certification as explained in Section 65B. Though the evidence produced by CEAC has been presented and accepted in some court proceedings, there used to be continued discussion on the subject.

Now in a recent case, Supreme Court has provided some clarification.

According the report, the Supreme Court stated

” An electronic record by way of secondary evidence shall not be admitted in evidence unless the requirements under Section 65B (of Evidence Act) are satisfied. Thus, in the case of CD, VCD, chip, etc., the same shall be accompanied by the certificate in terms of Section 65B obtained at the time of taking the document, without which, the secondary evidence pertaining to that electronic record, is inadmissible,” said the court in the judgment written by Justice Kurian Joseph.”

Refer: Article in FPJ

Naavi

About Vijayashankar Na

Naavi is a veteran Cyber Law specialist in India and is presently working from Bangalore as an Information Assurance Consultant. Pioneered concepts such as ITA 2008 compliance, Naavi is also the founder of Cyber Law College, a virtual Cyber Law Education institution. He now has been focusing on the projects such as Secure Digital India and Cyber Insurance
This entry was posted in ITA 2008. Bookmark the permalink.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.