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Electronic Record Inadmissible If Section 65B Certificate Isn’t Produced

The Supreme Court in Harpal Singh @ Chhota Vs. State Of Punjab, has reiterated that any electronic record in the form of secondary evidence cannot be admitted in evidence unless a certificate under Section 65B (4) of the Evidence Act is produced. In the instant case, the prosecution had produced printed copy of the computer generated call details kept in usual ordinary course of business and stored in a hard disc of the company server, to co-relate the calls made from and to the cell phones involved, including those, amongst others, recovered from the accused persons. However, a certificate relatable thereto as required under Section 65B (4) of the Evidence Act was not adduced. The high court held that the evidence is admissible.

Section 65(B) states that electronic records will be admissible as evidence is the following conditions are fulfilled:

(a) the computer output containing the information was produced by computer during the period over which computer was used regularly to store or process information for the purposes of any activities regularly carried on over that period by the person having lawful control over the use of computer.

(b) during the said period the information of the kind contained in the electronic record or of the kind from which the information so contained is derived was regularly fed into the computer in the ordinary course of the said activities.

(c) throughout the material part of the said period, the computer was operating properly or, if not, then in respect of any period in which it was not operating properly or was out of operation for that part of the period, was not such to affect the electronic record or the accuracy of its contents.

(d) The information contained in the electronic record reproduces or is derived from such information fed into computer in ordinary course of said activities.

(3) Where over any period, the function of storing and processing information for the purposes of any activities regularly carried on over that period as mentioned in Clause (a) of Sub-section (2) was regularly performed by the computers, whether-

(a) by a combination of computer operating over that period, or

(b) by different computers operating in succession over that period; or

(c) by different combinations of computers operating in succession over that period of time; or

(d) in any other manner involving successive operation over that period, in whatever order, of one or more computers and one or more combinations of computers,

all the computers used for that purpose during that period shall be treated for the purpose of this section as constituting a single computer Page 3097 and any reference in the section to a computer shall be construed accordingly.

Read more at: http://www.livelaw.in/electronic-record-inadmissible-section-65b-certificate-isnt-produced-sc/

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