P26. It is general information, not legal advice; always read the judgments and the statute as they stand and take counsel where the stakes warrant it.

Anvar P.V. v P.K. Basheer (2014) — the certificate is mandatory

The turning point is Anvar P.V. v P.K. Basheer, decided by a three-judge bench in 2014. The Court held that an electronic record tendered as secondary evidence must be accompanied by a certificate under Section 65B(4) of the Indian Evidence Act, and that without that certificate the secondary electronic evidence is inadmissible. Section 65B was read as a complete code for proving electronic records, displacing the general secondary-evidence provisions. In reaching that conclusion the Court overruled the earlier approach in State (NCT of Delhi) v Navjot Sandhu (the Parliament Attack case), which had allowed electronic records to be proved without the certificate. Anvar set the baseline that the rest of the case law builds on: no certificate, no admission of the secondary record.

P26

The Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam (BSA) 2023 replaced the Indian Evidence Act with effect from 1 July 2024. The old Section 65B is now re-enacted, in substance, as Section 63 of the BSA, which retains the certificate requirement and prescribes a certificate format in the Schedule, organised as a Part A (deponent details) and Part B (technical / device details). Because the statutory architecture is carried over, the principles worked out in the Section 65B judgments — the certificate as a condition precedent, the route to compel a certificate when it cannot be obtained — are generally treated as continuing to guide the reading of Section 63. Exactly how the earlier case law maps onto the new wording is for the courts to settle over time. For a side-by-side comparison, see our note on the difference between Section 63 BSA and Section 65B IEA, and for the form itself our guide to the Section 65B certificate format with an example.

P26?
The Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam (BSA) 2023 replaced the Indian Evidence Act from 1 July 2024, and Section 63 of the BSA re-enacts the substance of the old Section 65B, including the certificate requirement, now with a prescribed Part A / Part B Schedule form. Courts and commentators generally treat the principles in the Section 65B judgments as continuing to guide the reading of Section 63, though how earlier case law applies to the new statute is for the courts to settle. This is general information only.

Do hash values help satisfy the certificate requirement?
The certificate is a legal attestation about the device and the process that produced the electronic record; a hash value is technical proof that the file has not been altered. They are complementary: the case law focuses on the certificate, while cryptographic hashes strengthen the integrity story behind it. A practical workflow records strong hashes (SHA-256 or better) at the point of acquisition and references them in the certificate. e-Dex helps produce that integrity documentation; it does not give legal advice or guarantee admissibility.

Conclusion

The arc of 65B case law in India runs from Anvar P.V. v P.K. Basheer, through the brief detour of Shafhi Mohammad, to the settled position in Arjun Panditrao Khotkar — and now into Section 63 of the BSA 2023. The through-line never changes: prove your electronic records properly, certify them, and back the certificate with a verifiable integrity record. You can generate the hashes and the supporting integrity certificate in minutes, fully offline, on a single Windows machine with e-Dex — the Digital Evidence Integrity Suite. Download it free and build your evidence on a foundation you can re-verify at any time. This article is general information and not legal advice.