The Supreme Court is set to decide whether its ruling in Anwar PV v. PK Basheer & Ors., which clarified the requirements for admitting electronic records as secondary evidence, should be applied retrospectively or only prospectively.
The case involved a judgment that mandated a certificate under Section 65B of the Indian Evidence Act for the admissibility of electronic records. This certificate must be obtained at the time the document is created; otherwise, the electronic evidence cannot be admitted.
The Court, consisting of Justices Surya Kant, Dipankar Datta, and Ujjal Bhuyan, has asked Solicitor General Tushar Mehta to assist in addressing whether the 2015 ruling in Anwar PV should be applied from the date of the judgment or from the enactment of the law itself. The Court has directed the Registry to issue a notice to Advocate MK Maroria, the Standing Counsel for the Union of India, along with a soft copy of the application, so that he can brief the Solicitor General before the next hearing on August 22, 2024.
In 2020, the Supreme Court reaffirmed the Anwar PV ruling in the case of Arjun Panditrao Khotkar v. Kailash Kushanrao Gorantyal, emphasizing that the mandate of Section 65B should be upheld and overruling the 2018 decision in Shafhi Mohammed v. State of Himachal Pradesh, which had relaxed this requirement under certain circumstances. The Court in Anwar PV had overturned its previous decision in Navjot Sandhu, which had held that Section 65B was not a mandatory requirement.
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