Brief of Evidentiary Value of Whatsapp Messages - Vrankers
Brief of Evidentiary value of Whatsapp Messages
Quick Brief of the order passed by the Punjab and Haryana #High Court on Evidentiary Value of #Whatsapp messages in Rakesh Kumar Singla vs Union of India.
2. Narcotics Control Bureau opposed the bail application and relied upon whatsapp messages of the accused along with the whatsapp chats of the petitioner.
3. On making the above submissions, Court asked NCB regarding the certificate under section 65B which should be accompanied with these messages to provide them an evidentiary value.
4. #Section65B of Indian Evidence Act 1872 concerned with the admissibility of Electronics records. Here court mention sub clause (4) of section 65B which states - ‘In any proceedings where it is desired to give a statement in evidence by virtue of this section, a certificate doing any of the following things, that is to say,—
(a) identifying the electronic record containing the statement and describing the manner in which it was produced;
(b) giving such particulars of any device involved in the production of that electronic record as may be appropriate for the purpose of showing that the electronic record was produced by a computer;
(c) dealing with any of the matters to which the conditions mentioned in subsection (2) relate, and purporting to be signed by a person occupying a responsible official position in relation to the operation of the relevant device or the management of the relevant activities (whichever is appropriate) shall be evidence of any matter stated in the certificate; and for the purposes of this sub-section it shall be sufficient for a matter to be stated to the best of the knowledge and belief of the person stating it.
6. Court Observed by looking on recent judgement by #Supreme Court in Arjun Panditrao Khotkar Vs Kailash Kushanrao Gorantyal and others (2007) that a certificate under Section 65B of Indian Evidence Act 1872 is required when putting reliance on #Electronics Records and thus it has no evidentiary value if not accompanied with the certificate under Section 65B.
7. Bench has taken a #Liberal view allowing the NCB to rely on WhatsApp messages after complying with the certificate under Section 65B and granted bail to the applicant.
8. NCB placed reliance on certain custodial statements of the accused under #Sec67 of the NDPS act to argue on prima facie offence that was made out. According to Sec 67 of the #NDPS Act, any officer authorised by the Centre or a State government may during an investigation call for information from any person to examine whether there was any violation of the act.
9. The bench did not rely on the statement made under Section 67 of NDPS Act in the light of Supreme Court judgement in Tofan Singh V. Union of India which held that custodial statements are inadmissible evidence.
10. Hence the court held that in order to rely on WhatsApp chat NCB has to rely only after compliance of provision of Section 65B of Indian Evidence Act 1872.
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