N. Sri Rama Reddy v. V.V. Giri

Everything in the documentary-evidence module depends on what counts as a document. If a tape recording is a document, the whole apparatus follows automatically: contents proved by primary or secondary evidence, the best-evidence rule, the conditions for secondary evidence. If it is not, it is nothing.

Sri Rama Reddy, decided with Pratap Singh v. State of Punjab, is the authority that a recorded conversation is admissible evidence. Under the Adhiniyam the question has moved on — electronic records are now expressly dealt with — but the case remains the starting point for the reasoning, and the reasoning is what is examined.

The Court was asked to receive a conversation, or dialogue, recorded on a tape-recording machine.

The Court accepted a conversation or dialogue recorded on a tape-recording machine as admissible evidence.

Step one — the word document is not to be construed restrictively. Etymologically it means something which shows or teaches, and it is evidential or informative in character. So a writing of the parties' compromise terms recorded by a court and duly signed is a document.

Step two — permanence plus information. There is no reason in principle why the recording, in some permanent or semi-permanent manner, of the human voice or other sounds relevant to the issue to be determined should not be a document, provided that it furnishes information. That formulation is the usable test: a permanent record that furnishes information is a document, whatever the medium.

Step three — the parallel with other non-written media. The same reasoning admits models, maps, diagrams and photographs, which for evidentiary purposes are nothing except so far as they have a human being's credit to support them; they then become media of communication, a superior substitute for words. The tape is in the same position: it is evidence because a witness can vouch for how it came to exist.

Use this case to establish the threshold proposition in any question about tape recordings, CCTV, call recordings or messages: the item is a document, so the documentary rules apply to it.

Then move to the modern law, because an answer that stops at Sri Rama Reddy is incomplete under the Adhiniyam. Three provisions must be named. BSA s. 61 forbids denying admissibility to a record merely because it is electronic or digital — a provision with no ancestor in the 1872 Act. BSA s. 57 and its Explanations treat electronic records as primary evidence. BSA s. 63 governs the admissibility of computer output, and its sub-section (4) differs from the old s. 65B(4) in two respects worth stating precisely: the certificate accompanies the record at each instance of submission, and it is signed by the person in charge and an expert. Sections 57 and 63 are to be read together; treating them as alternatives is the standard error.

The case does not decide that a recording is genuine, nor does it dispense with proof of the circumstances in which the recording was made, the identification of the voices, or the absence of tampering. Those go to weight and to the conditions of proof.

The numbering trap. Old s. 61 is BSA s. 56; old s. 62, primary evidence, is BSA s. 57; old s. 63, secondary evidence, is BSA s. 58; old s. 65 is BSA s. 60; old s. 65A is BSA s. 62; old s. 65B is BSA s. 63.