Drone-Generated Digital Evidence In India: Bridging The Gap Between The DGCA Drone Rules, 2021 And The Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam, 2023
Mridula Dharshini M, SASTRA Deemed University, Thanjavur
ABSTRACT
In India, drones have quickly transitioned from the military and hobbyist use to everyday civilian, commercial and law-enforcement applications — from crop surveys and infrastructure inspection to encroachment monitoring and criminal investigation. As their footage increasingly features in courtrooms, a key legal question remains mostly unaddressed: Is India’s current legal framework really equipped to deal with drone-generated evidence reliably? This paper argues that it does not. The Indian Drone Rules, 2021, made under the Aircraft Act, 1934, are almost exclusively concerned with airspace management, registration and operational compliance, and do not cover at all evidentiary aspects including data preservation, tamper-proofing and authentication.
The Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam, 2023, in contrast, which modernises the treatment of electronic records under Section 63, was drafted keeping in mind conventional digital evidence such as call records, emails and CCTV footage and does not take into account the distinctive features of drone- captured data, which include geospatial metadata, flight-log correlation, live- streamed footage and cloud-based storage across multiple jurisdictions.
This paper doctrinally discusses the real-world implications of this divide such as inconsistent treatment by the judiciary, and the reduced reliability of drone footage in criminal and civil proceedings. This paper attempts to explore possible legislative and regulatory solutions to fill this void with particular reference to the need for clarificatory guidance under the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam and drone-specific chain-of-custody protocols.
Keywords: drone forensics; electronic evidence; Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam, 2023; Drone Rules, 2021; Digital Sky Platform; Section 63; chain of custody
