Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam 2023
Definition
India's replacement for the Indian Evidence Act 1872, in force from 1 July 2024. Section 39 carries forward the expert-witness opinion provisions, allowing courts to consider the opinions of persons specially skilled in science, art, handwriting or foreign law.
- Jurisdiction
- India
- Replaces
- Indian Evidence Act 1872
- In force from
- 1 July 2024
- Expert opinion clause
- Section 39
Common questions
What changed for expert witnesses when this Act replaced the 1872 Evidence Act?+
Section 39 largely carries forward the earlier provision allowing courts to consider opinions of persons specially skilled in science, art, handwriting, or foreign law, so the substantive test for admitting expert opinion did not change materially in this transition.
Does this Act set a scientific-validity gatekeeping standard like Daubert in the United States?+
No, the Act does not impose a formal science-validation gatekeeping requirement comparable to Daubert; admissibility of expert and forensic evidence in India continues to rest largely on judicial discretion applied case by case.
Why was the Indian Evidence Act replaced rather than amended?+
The replacement was part of a wider 2023 overhaul of India's core criminal law statutes, alongside new codes replacing the Indian Penal Code and the Code of Criminal Procedure, intended to modernise and consolidate colonial-era legislation.
Related terms
- Daubert Standard
- The US federal evidentiary standard (Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, 1993) requiring that expert testimony be based on scientifically valid methods with...
- Blind Verification
- The procedure in which a second fingerprint examiner independently performs the Analysis and Comparison stages without knowledge of the first examiner's conclusion....
- Cairns Checklist
- A practical self-review tool for UK forensic expert reports, derived from CrimPR Part 19 requirements and professional guidance, that prompts the examiner...
- Contextual Cognitive Bias
- The mechanism by which prior knowledge of case context, including suspect identity, other evidence, or case outcome, influences an examiner's pattern-recognition conclusions...
- CrimPR Part 19
- Criminal Procedure Rules Part 19 (England and Wales): the expert-witness procedural code requiring disclosure of qualifications, methodology, limitations, and whether the method...
- Duty to the Court
- The obligation of expert witnesses in UK proceedings (and, to varying degrees, in other jurisdictions) to assist the court with objective, unbiased...
- Frye Standard
- The US legal test for admissibility of scientific evidence, originating from Frye v. United States (1923), which required that a technique be...
- General-Acceptance Test
- The Frye rule that a scientific principle must be sufficiently established to have gained acceptance in the particular field to which it...
- Judicial Gatekeeping
- The role of the trial judge in screening scientific evidence before it reaches the jury. Under Frye the judge defers to expert...
- Linear ACE-V
- An implementation of ACE-V methodology that enforces strict sequential documentation: analysis of the latent mark must be completed and recorded before the...
- Novel Science Problem
- The practical difficulty that arises when a technique is new and no scientific consensus yet exists. Under Frye, a sound technique is...
- Relevant Scientific Community
- The group of scientists whose expertise covers the technique under review. Identifying this community is the first step of the Frye inquiry....
Explained in these topics
- Expert Witness Testimony and Cognitive Bias Mitigation
- The Frye Standard: General AcceptanceIndia's current evidence statute, which replaced the Indian Evidence Act 1872. It governs the admissibility of expert opinion in Indian courts through relevanc...