relevant fact
Under the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam, 2023, evidence may be given only of facts in issue and of facts declared relevant (s.3, old s.5 Evidence Act). One fact is relevant to another when it is connected with it in any of the ways listed in the provisions on relevancy: as part of the same transaction (res gestae), as cause or effect, as motive, preparation or conduct, as explaining or introducing a fact, as an admission or confession, as a statement of a person who cannot be called, as opinion, or as character in the limited cases allowed.
“Relevant” in the Act thus means legally relevant, not merely logically relevant. A fact that has some logical bearing but falls under none of the listed heads cannot be proved. Contrast a fact in issue, which is a fact from which a right or liability in the case follows.
Example
The accused's purchase of poison a day before the death is a relevant fact as preparation, though the fact in issue is whether he caused the death.
In Indian law
- Sections 2 and 3, Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam, 2023 (old ss.3 and 5 Evidence Act)
See also
fact in issue · relevancy and admissibility · res gestae · evidence
Read more in the study notes
- Introduction to the law of evidence and its central conceptions (Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam)
- Res gestae, motive, conduct, identification, conspiracy and alibi (sections 4 to 9) (Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam)
- Admissions: definition, persons whose admissions are relevant, and evidentiary value (Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam)
- Confessions: meaning, forms, voluntariness and confessions to the police (Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam)
- Dying declarations (section 26(a)) (Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam)
- Opinions of third persons: experts, handwriting, the Examiner of Electronic Evidence, custom and relationship (sections 39 to 45) (Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam)