The Madras High Court has impressed upon the need for the Parliament to take a complete relook at laws relating to the presentation of electronic evidence before criminal courts and come up with appropriate legislation that could address the present day needs besides making procedures simpler to let in such evidence during trial.
A Division Bench of Justices M.S. Ramesh and N. Anand Venkatesh said the legislature ought to have introduced ‘electronic evidence’ as a separate chapter in the Evidence Act of 1872, considering its magnitude and growing importance in solving crimes, instead of having inserted it into Chapter V, which deals with documentary evidence.
“In the considered view of this court, this has really opened the pandora’s box for all the confusions with which the courts are dabbling these days,” the Bench remarked, lamenting how the prosecution’s failure to obtain a certificate under Section 65B of the Evidence Act could make the entire electronic evidence inadmissible during trial.
