Indian evidence act -adv vijayaragavan

PREFACE

“The Indian Evidence Act”, said Sir James Stephen, “is is little more than an attempt to reduce the English law of evidence to the form of express propositions arranged in their natural order, with some modifications rendered necessary by the particular circumstances of India.”
The Evidence Act has entered its 150th year and continues to remain the principal law of Evidence in this country. Its timeless appeal is an oustanding testament to the erudition and learning of its principal architect, Sir James Stephen. Writing in 2011, the Australian judge and jurist Dyson Heydon aptly remarked “No one person has ever had so much influence on so important and far-reaching a piece of legislation affecting so many jurisdictions and so many people.”
In his address to the Legislative Council of India on 31.03.1872, Stephen laid emphasis on the principal aims of the law of Evidence. He observes:
“The real use of, rules of evidence in ascertaining the truth, consists in the fact that they supply tests, warranted by very long and varied experience, as to two great points, the relevancy of facts to the question to be decided by the Court, and the sort of evidence by which particular facts ought to be proved.”

The Evidence Act had already reached its mid 40’s when the first edition of this book was born in 1916. One hundred and five years and 25 editions have rolled by. The book has grown in age just as it has done in stature. The commentary has been moulded, chiselled and reinvigorated over the years by some of the best legal minds in the country. Our task as editors was akin to restoring and updating an antique building, aided, no doubt, by the work of those who have preceded us. As Sir Isaac Newton said to Robert Hooke in 1675, “If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants”.
In pursuing this task, we have attempted to weed out unnecessary precedents that have clouded and obscured the general principle of every provision. An attempt has been made to set out the legal position, notice contemporary developments and offer appropriate critiques. In updating this work, we have also cautiously borne in mind the warning administered by Stephen:
“I do not believe that one case in twenty of those which are reported [in the Indian reports] is at all worth reporting; and when we think what the High Courts are, it seems to me little less than monstrous to make every division bench into a little legislature, which is to be continually occupied in making binding precedents, with all of which every Court and Magistrate in the country is bound to be acquainted. Careful reports of great cases are perhaps the most instructive kind of legal literature; but I know nothing which so completely enervates the mind, and prevents it from regarding law as a whole, or as depending upon any principles at all, as the habit of continually dwelling upon and referring to minute decisions upon every petty question which occurs.”

The recent decision of the Supreme Court in Tofan Singh v State of Tamil Nadu, (2021 4 SCC 1) has set at rest the raging controversy on the admissibility of confessions recorded by the officials of the Department of Revenue Intelligence (DRI), under the NDPS Act. The decison has, however, had the undesirable effect of equating the officers of the DRI into members of the police force, the latter being the intended group originally envisaged under the dragnet of Section 25. We have also noticed the continuing interpretive issues plaguing Section 65-B of the Evidence Act, notwithstanding the attempt made by the Supreme Court in Arjun Panditrao Khotkar v Kailash Kushanrao Gorantyal (2020 7 SCC 1) to settle the legal position. The “truth must triumph” doctrine propounded in Nandlal Wasudeo Badwaik v Lata Nandlal Badwaik, (2014) 2 SCC 576 has pitted the evidentiary rule of conclusive proof against the results obtained by DNA analysis. The Supreme Court has held that though a fact may be conclusively proved with the aid of the presumption of Section 112 yet such a presumption can be rebutted through DNA tests. In a short critique, we have submitted that this conclusion is a contradiction in terms.
We have also noticed the development of the law in a carefully reasoned judgment of the Madras High Court regarding the spousal competence of witnesses under Section 120, and the interplay of the provisions of the RTI Act and the law of state privilege under Section 123 of the Evidence Act.
We place on record our deep gratitude to Justice V. Ramasubramanian, Judge, Supreme Court of India for kindly consenting to write a typically insightful and erudite Foreword to the 150th year edition. The Introduction penned by Justice P.N Prakash, Judge, Madras High Court has added lustre to this work. It raises a number of searching questions : Have “we the people” stuck to the letter of the law? Or have we gone Indic in vision upon snapping the links of British yoke? Is there an Indianness in scope and vision? Justice P.N Prakash has thrown some much needed light into the possible mendacity in our cultural construct.
We also place on record our grateful thanks to the entire team at Lexis Nexis for their support and invaluable editorial assistance during the final stages of this work, and their expert professionalism in the packaging and presentation of this work.
We have left no stone unturned in ensuring that this work is up to date. However, as banal as it may sound : to err is human. We, therefore, readily own up to any error or omission that may eventually be found. We would be grateful to have the responses of the readers and users of the good, bad and the critical kind.
The law is stated as on 30th November, 2021.

CHENNAI N. VIJAYARAGHAVAN
SHARATH CHANDRAN
09.12.2021

You may also like...