Oral and documentary evidence

Your landlord in Vashi tells a friend that he saw the tenant pay the deposit. The friend repeats it to you, and you tell the court. Will the judge accept your version? No, because you did not see anything. Now suppose the dispute is about what the rent agreement says. Will the judge accept a witness who simply remembers the clause? Usually not, because the agreement itself exists. The Act has two rules here, one for what witnesses may say and one for how documents must be shown.

In two minutes

Facts other than the contents of documents are proved by oral evidence, which must be direct (ss.54–55); the contents of documents are proved by the document itself, called primary evidence, and only in listed cases by a copy or other secondary evidence (ss.56–60, 64).

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