interested witness
An interested witness is one who stands to gain from the outcome or has a reason to falsely implicate the accused, for instance because of enmity. A related witness, such as the victim's relative, is not automatically an interested witness. In Dalip Singh (1953) the Supreme Court held that a close relative is usually the last person to screen the real culprit and falsely implicate an innocent person, so relationship alone is no ground to reject testimony.
The law does not exclude the evidence of interested witnesses. It requires the court to scrutinise it with care and, where appropriate, look for corroboration. If after careful examination the evidence is found trustworthy, a conviction can rest on it. Students should not write that the evidence of relatives is “inadmissible”; admissibility and weight are different questions.
Example
Though the eyewitnesses were the deceased's brothers, the court relied on them, holding that a related witness is not necessarily an interested witness.
In Indian law
See also
hostile witness · corroboration · witness · falsus in uno falsus in omnibus