Tag: EVIDENCE

Witness of victim of sexual assault

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Corroboration as a condition for judicial reliance on the testimony of a prosecutrix is not a matter of Law, but a guidance of prudence under given circumstances. Indeed, from place to place, from age to age, from varying life-styles and behavioural complexes, inferences from a given set of facts, oral and circumstantial, may have to be drawn not with dead uniformity but realistic diversity lest rigidity in the shape of rule of Law in this area be introduced through a new type of precedential tyranny

Section 94 of the Indian Evidence Act

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When sections 92, 94 and 95 of the Evidence Act are applied to a string of correspondence between parties, it is important to remember that each document must be taken to be part of a coherent whole, which happens only when the “plain” language of the document is first applied accurately to existing facts.

Witness relative

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A witness is normally to be considered independent unless he or she springs from sources which are likely to be tainted and that usually means unless the witness has cause, such as enmity against the accused, to wish to implicate him falsely. Ordinarily a close relation would be the last to screen the real culprit and falsely implicate an innocent person.

Benefit of doubt

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Proof beyond reasonable doubt is a guideline, not a fetish. (See Inder Singh and another vs. State (Delhi Admn.) (AIR 1978 SC 1091). Vague hunches cannot take place of judicial evaluation. “A Judge does not preside over a criminal trial, merely to see that no innocent man is punished. A Judge also presides to see that a guilty man, does not escape.

Injuries on the accused

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One of the pleas is that the prosecution has not explained the injuries on the accused. Issue is if there is no such explanation what would be its effect? We are not prepared to agree with the learned counsel for the defence that in each and every case where prosecution fails to explain the injuries found on some of the accused, the prosecution case should automatically be rejected, without any further probe.

Witness made statement in expectation of death did not die

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In Maqsoodan and Ors. v. State of U.P., AIR 1983 SC 126, this Court dealt with an issue wherein a person who had made a statement in expectation of death did not die. The court held that it cannot be treated as a dying declaration as his statement was not admissible under Section 32 of the Indian Evidence Act, 1872 (hereinafter called the Act 1872), but it was to be dealt with under Section 157 of the Act 1872, which provides that the former statement of a witness may be proved to corroborate later testimony as to the same fact.

Witness -number

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Trustworthy evidence This question has been definitively dealt with by a Constitution Bench of this Court in Masalti v. State of Uttar Pradesh, AIR 1965 SC 202, wherein the Court observed as […]