Shamsher Singh Verma v. State of Haryana — Digital/audio evidence, right to get recording examined at FSL

Part of the Forensic Docket on Legal Desire Forensics — how a forensic technique fared under appellate scrutiny.

The facts

The accused-appellant was alleged to have molested a nine-year-old female child, in a case where the complainant’s family and the accused were related to each other.

The accused applied under Section 294 of the Code of Criminal Procedure to have a compact disc exhibited and proved through the Forensic Science Laboratory, asserting that it contained a recording of a conversation between the victim’s father and the accused’s son and wife concerning a property dispute between the families.

This application was rejected by the courts below.

The Supreme Court held that a compact disc is a ‘document’ and, on that basis, the appellant was entitled to have the recording examined and proved through the Forensic Science Laboratory rather than have his application summarily rejected.

Why this belongs in the Forensic Docket: Establishes that an accused’s request to have digital/audio media forensically examined by an FSL cannot be brushed aside as inadmissible merely because it is stored on a compact disc — a foundational point for how electronic evidence should be treated in the defence’s favour as well as the prosecution’s.

Case details

Read the full judgment (PDF), sourced from the Indian Supreme Court Judgments open dataset (AWS Open Data Registry, CC-BY-4.0).

Explore more in the Forensic Docket or browse the full Forensics hub.