Evidentiary Standards In The Era Of AI: Is The Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam Equipped Enough?
- IJLLR Journal
- May 17
- 2 min read
Aditi Shelke, University of Mumbai Law Academy
Chaitanya Adepu, Adv. Balasaheb Apte College of Law
ABSTRACT
This article explores how deepfakes create a huge issue for proving evidence in Indian courts under the new Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam, 2023. It further proves that BSA’s rules for checking electronic evidence like making sure devices worked right, tracking who controlled them, matching original data and using hash codes to prove nothing changed are not strong enough now. Contemporary deepfakes are created with such sophistication and disseminated so rapidly across electoral campaigns, misinformation networks, and non-consensual intimate imagery that existing provisions cannot detect fabrication occurring at the point of content creation itself. While examining current laws, our analysis reveals that digital signatures and hash values can verify that files remain unaltered during transmission and storage, but they cannot establish whether the original content depicts actual events or was synthetically generated. Forensic investigators also tend to assume evidence was created by humans, missing the possibility that AI produced it from the start. Our legal system and investigative methods are still catching up to a world where AI can create convincing fake evidence, and our current tools can verify technical authenticity but not whether something was artificially generated. Inspired from around the world, courts being cautious about digitally enhanced images and outright bans on AI edited legal submissions show how different systems are adapting. New laws should require upfront verification that evidence is authentic, using technology neutral forensic tools to detect and filter out fake content which would balance the need to keep up with technological changes while maintaining the justice system’s core goal of finding the truth.
Keywords: Artificial Intelligence (AI), Electronic Evidence, Authenticity of Evidence, Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam
