Definitions under Information Technology (Amendment) Act, 2008- S.2

Your phone holds a WhatsApp chat, a location history, a UPI receipt and a video of a road accident. In a dispute, each of these may matter more than any witness. But a court cannot simply accept a screenshot. It must know what the record is, where it came from and whether the machine that made it can be trusted. The Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam, 2023 answers these questions by borrowing vocabulary from the Information Technology Act, 2000, and then building its own rules on top.

In two minutes

The Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam, 2023 treats electronic and digital records as documents (s.2(1)(d)), gives words defined in the Information Technology Act, 2000 the same meaning where the Adhiniyam has not defined them (s.2(2)), and sets special rules for their admissibility and proof in sections 61 to 63 with a certificate in the Schedule.

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