The Supreme Court of India(SCI)has held that a compact disc (CD) is
to be treated as a document under the law and litigants should be
allowed to prove the authenticity of such electronic evidence in legal
proceedings.
The court was passing a judgment in a
case of child sex abuse in which the accused wanted to place on record a
CD of taped telephone conversations to prove his “innocence”.
A
Bench of Justices Dipak Misra and P.C. Pant set aside a Punjab and
Haryana High Court order agreeing with the trial court’s decision to
deny the accused’s plea to produce recorded telephonic conversation
between his wife and son and the girl’s father to prove his point that
there was a property dispute between the two families.
The SC did not go into the authenticity of the taped conversations
or the CD, but asked the trial court to allow the accused to place it on
record.
“Without expressing any opinion as to the
final merits of the case, this appeal is allowed and the orders passed
by the trial court and the HC are set aside. The application [for
placing on record the compact disc and getting it examined by forensic
laboratory] shall stand allowed,” it said.
“We are of
the view that the courts below have erred in law in not allowing the
application of the defence to play the compact disc relating to the
conversation between the father of the victim and son and wife of the
appellant [accused] regarding alleged property dispute,” the court held
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