The Indian Evidence Act, 1872 (IEA) was a procedural Act of the Imperial Legislative Council that governed the admissibility and evaluation of evidence in Indian courts. It was enacted on March 15, 1872, and came into force on September 1, 1872, to consolidate and codify the law of evidence, which was previously a mixture of customary law, English common law, and local practices. The Act solved the problem of a non-uniform system of evidence, which varied by community and tradition, by introducing a standard set of rules applicable to all judicial proceedings in India.
The Act's mechanism was based on three core principles: evidence must be confined to the matter in issue, hearsay evidence must generally be excluded, and the best evidence must be presented. Section 5 was the foundational provision, stating that evidence could be given only of "facts in issue" and "relevant facts". The sections detailing which facts are considered "relevant facts" were Sections 5 to 55. The Act also defined key concepts like "evidence," which included all oral statements and documents (including electronic records) presented to the court.
The Indian Evidence Act, 1872, was recently repealed and replaced by the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam (BSA), 2023, which received the President's assent on December 25, 2023, and commenced on July 1, 2024. The BSA, 2023, is connected to the simultaneous replacement of the Indian Penal Code, 1860, by the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023, and the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973, by the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023. The core principles of relevancy and admissibility largely stayed the same, but the BSA modernized the law by explicitly expanding the scope of "document" to include electronic and digital records, addressing the judicial ambiguity that arose under the IEA, 1872, particularly concerning the certification requirement for electronic evidence.