Naavi.org

Ever since ITA 2000 became a law in India (17th October 2000), discussions are being held on the admissibility of electronic evidence in a Court of law. Section 65B of the Indian Evidence Act laid down the procedure by which an electronic document may be considered as “Admissible”.

Naavi.org has clarified this many times and since around 2002 maintains a service “Cyber Evidence Archival Center” providing certified copies of electronic document in print form with certification as explained in Section 65B. Though the evidence produced by CEAC has been presented and accepted in some court proceedings, there used to be continued discussion on the subject.

Now in a recent case, Supreme Court has provided some clarification.

According the report, the Supreme Court stated

” An electronic record by way of secondary evidence shall not be admitted in evidence unless the requirements under Section 65B (of Evidence Act) are satisfied. Thus, in the case of CD, VCD, chip, etc., the same shall be accompanied by the certificate in terms of Section 65B obtained at the time of taking the document, without which, the secondary evidence pertaining to that electronic record, is inadmissible,” said the court in the judgment written by Justice Kurian Joseph.”

Refer: Article in FPJ

Naavi

The recent report on the compromise of 4.93 million passwords has triggered a renewed interest in Insurance against Data Security threats. According to this report in Indian Express, (See here), some of the BPOs in India have been showing interest in buying such products.

This report is very important since it establishes the viability of such insurance. Naavi has been advocating that Banks should take such insurance to protect the customers against Phishing frauds.RBI has also mandated the same to Banks since 2001.  Many of the Banks have however been suggesting that no such insurance is available in India.

With the developments reported in the news papers,  such excuses will no longer be be acceptable to the judiciary.

This is good news for those Cyber Crime victims who have been pursuing their cases against Banks such as ICICI Bank, PNB, SBI, AXIS Bank etc.

Naavi

In a commendable move, Mr Rajesh Aggarwal, Adjudicator of Maharashtra (IT Secretary) created a precedence in conducting an online adjudication session with litigants in Nagpur through video conferencing.

Report

Naavi has been advocating such an approach for a long time but no adjudicator had so far taken such a decision so far.  Naavi has also pioneered a facility  at www.arbitration.in for the purpose where the session is also CEAC certified. We are only waiting for more and more persons like Mr Rajesh Aggarwal who are open to people friendly adjduicators.

Hope other adjudicators will also take a cue from Mr Rajesh Aggarwal.

Naavi