Who Can Certify Electronic Evidence? The Supreme Court's Unfinished Interpretation Of Section 63(4) Of The Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam, 2023
- IJLLR Journal
- Aug 8
- 1 min read
Rajdeep Malik, Bareilly College, Bareilly, Affiliated to Mahatma Jyotiba Phule Rohilkhand University, Bareilly, Uttar Pradesh, India
ABSTRACT
Section 63(4) of the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam, 2023 conditions the admissibility of secondary electronic evidence on a standard-form certificate whose Schedule is split into Part A, signed by the party, and Part B, signed by an unspecified "expert." This bifurcation raised a question the statute left unanswered: who is competent to sign Part B? A Madras High Court view confined that role to Examiners of Electronic Evidence notified under Section 79A of the Information Technology Act, 2000, threatening to route all digital evidence through a handful of forensic laboratories. In Pune Bar Association v. Union of India (2026), the Supreme Court upheld the constitutional validity of Section 63(4), treating the hash-value and expert requirements as bearing a rational nexus to authenticity and integrity, and read Sections 39(1) and 39(2) of the BSA harmoniously to permit court- satisfied private cyber-forensics experts to sign Part B. Yet the Court declined notice and kept the question of law open, producing an authoritative signal without a binding rule. This article traces the evolution from Section 65B, dissects the Court's reasoning, distinguishes admissibility from authenticity and weight, compares United States and English approaches, and argues that India's certification model remains clarified in direction but unfinished in doctrine.
Keywords: electronic evidence; Section 63(4) Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam 2023; Part B certificate; Examiner of Electronic Evidence; Section 79A IT Act; hash value; admissibility; deepfakes.
