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shailesh (technical associate)     20 June 2012

Can any documents taken under rti can be used in court

Hi ,

I have taken some ownership documents for some property under RTI Act 2005 from Water and Electricty Board in Delhi.

 

Can these documents be used in Court?



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 4 Replies

Hemang (Advocate)     20 June 2012

Section 79 of the Indian Evidence Act reads as under:


 

The Court shall presume to be genuine every document purporting to be a certificate, certified copy, or other document, which is by law declared to be admissible as evidence of any particular fact, and which purports to be duly certified by any officer of the Central Government or of a State Government, or by any officer  in the State of Jammu and Kashmir who is duly authorized there to by the Central Government:

 

Provided that such document is substantially in the form and purports to be executed in the manner directed by law in that behalf.

 

The Court shall also presume that any officer by whom any such document purports to be signed or certified, held, when he signed, the official character which he claims in such paper.

 

Any person, who obtains the information under the Right to Information Act may either receive incomplete or complete information. It is, therefore, that when the information is required to prove the case before any authority, or judicial authority, the same has to be proved completely by discharging the "onus". The Public Information officer is parting with the information that is available on record, but the supplied information, although issued by the public authority remains "uncorroborated". 

 

Hence, it is advisable to base the pleading based on such information and ask the parties involved in a litigation to produce the document by way of discovery as provided under the provisions of Civil Procedure Code. Once, the documents are placed in compliance with the order of the court, it can be treated as authenticated and genuine documents. However, such documents placed on record by way of discovery are still required to be either proved or disproved as provided under the Indian Evidence Act. The "relevant fact" has to be established and proved. 

 

The documents demanded and supplied under the Right to Information Act may be corrobarated in the proceedings. Merely, because the documents are supplied by the Public Information Officer, those documents cannot be taken as "deemed establishment of facts". They are subject to norms under the evidence act and judicial scrutiny. Mere placing of the parted information cannot be taken as a relevant fact proved. 

2 Like

Advocate Bhartesh goyal (advocate)     20 June 2012

Your such documents can only be taken on record when you  prove that original documents has been either lost or destryed.

pervez (adviser)     20 June 2012

I agree with my colleages... the doc. can be used as secondary evidence...

subbareddy (advocate)     20 June 2012

The documents obtained under RTI can not be marked.  Go through commentary books


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