INTRODUCTION
Section 5 of the Indian Evidence Act lays down that evidence may be given of fact in issue and relevant fact described under S. 6 states:
“Facts which, though not in issue, are so connected with a fact in issue as to form part of the same transaction, are relevant, whether they occurred at the same time and place of at different times and places.”
The principle of law embodied in S.6 is usually known as the doctrine of res gestae. Facts which may be proved, as part of res gestae, must be facts other than those in issue but must be connected with it. Though hearsay evidence is not admissible, when it is res gestae it can be admissible in a court of law and may be reliable evidence. This section is used by lawyers as a last resort so; there is not much case law on this section.
The rationale behind this is the spontaneity and immediacy of such statement that there is hardly any time for the concoction. So, such statement must be contemporaneous with the acts which constitute the offense or at least immediately thereafter.
Res gestae includes facts which form part of the same transaction. So, it is pertinent to examine what is a transaction, when does it start and when does it end. If any fact fails to link itself with the main transaction, it fails to be a res gestae and hence inadmissible. Res gestae include elements that fall outside of the modern hearsay definition altogether, such as circumstantial evidence of the state of mind, so-called “verbal acts,” verbal parts of acts, and certain non-verbal conduct.
Because excited utterances are connected closely in time to the event and the excitement flows from the event, excited utterances were deemed part of the action (the “things done”) and hence, admissible despite the hearsay rule. Res gestae also hired the hearsay exceptions for present-sense impressions, excited utterances, direct evidence of the state of mind, and statements made to physicians.
MEANING OF RES GESTAE
Res gestae has no exact English translation. A literal translation means “something deliberately undertaken or done”.Few areas of the common law of hearsay are in greater dispute than the doctrine of res gestae.Dean Wigmore comments, “The phrase res gestae is, in the present state of the law, not only entirely useless but even positively harmful… It ought therefore wholly to be repudiated, as a vicious element in our legal phraseology. It should never be mentioned.”
Res gestae has been defined as, “Things did, or liberally speaking, the facts of the transaction explanatory of an act or showing a motive for acting; a matters incidental to a main fact and explanatory of it; including acts and words which are so closely connected with a main fact as will constitute a part of it, and without a knowledge of which the main fact might not be properly understood, even speaking for themselves though the instinctive words and acts of participants not the words and acts of participants when narrating the events, the circumstances, facts and declaration which grow out of the main fact, and contemporaneous with it and serve to illustrate its character or these circumstance which are the atomic and undersigned incidents of a particular litigated act and are admissible when illustrative of such act.
In Babulal v. W.I.T Ltd., it was observed that the statement of law in section 6 of the evidence act is usually known as Res Gestae. The literal meaning of the word ‘res’ is “everything that may form an object of rights and includes an object, subject matter or status”.
Res Gestae has been described as a term of protean significance and that there have been many definitions of the term. No evidential problem is as shrouded in doubt and confusion as is Res Gestae. The rule as to the admissibility of evidence known as the Res Gestae rule has been declared to be incapable of any precise definition and it has been applied to so many different and unrelated situations that it has been said that the difficulty of formulating a description of Res Gestae which will serve all circumstances seems insurmountable. It would be little short of miraculous if one single doctrine of Res Gestae would suffice for every situation.
There must be a main or principal fact or transaction, and only such declarations are admissible which grow out of the principal transaction and serve to illustrate its character, and are contemporary with, and derive some degree of credit from it. The main transaction is not necessarily confined to a particular point of time, but may extend over a longer or shorter period, according to the nature and character of the transaction.
“TRANSACTION,” DEFINED
A transaction, as the term used in this sec. is defined by a single name, as a crime, a contract, wrong or any other subject of inquiry which may be an issue. It includes both immediate cause and effect of an act or event, and also its collection of relevant circumstances, the other necessary antecedents of its occurrence, connected with it, at a reasonable distance of the time, pace and cause and effect.
A good working test of deciding what transaction is; is the proximity of time, unity or proximity of place, continuity of actions, and community of purpose. But the main test must be continuity of action and community of purpose. The condition for admissibility of a statement made by a person who was at the scene of occurrence is the proximity of time, the proximity of the police station and the continuity of action. The expression suggests not necessarily proximity of time so much as continuity of action and purpose.
A transaction may constitute a single incident occupying a few moments or it may be spread over a variety of acts, declaration etc. All these constitute incidents, which though not strictly constituting a fact in issue, accompany and tend to explain or qualify the fact in issue. All these facts are relevant only when they are connected by the proximity of time, unity or proximity of place, continuity of action and community of purpose or design.
Evidence which is connected with the principal subject matters of the charges as parts of one and the same transaction is relevant. Two distinct offenses may be so inseparably connected that the proof of one necessarily involves proving the other, and in such a case on a prosecution for one, evidence proving it cannot be excluded because it also proves the other.
Evidence as to other offenses by the accused would be relevant and admissible if there is a nexus between the offense charged and the other offenses or the two acts form part of the same transaction so as to fall within S.6. An entirely separate and disconnected offense is not admissible merely because it occurred at or about the same time as the res gestae of the offense on Trial.
Facts which are the occasion, cause or effect, immediate or otherwise, of relevant facts, or facts in issue, or which constitute the state of things under which they happened, or which afforded an opportunity for their occurrence or transaction, are relevant.
This section admits a very large class of facts connected with facts in issue or relevant facts, though not forming part of the transaction. Facts forming part of the same transaction are admissible under the preceding section. Evidence relating to collateral facts is admissible when such facts will, if established reasonable presumption as to the matter in dispute and when such evidence is reasonably conclusive. The section provides for the admission of several classes of facts which are connected with the transaction under inquiry in particular modes,
(1) As being the occasion or cause of a fact;
(2) As being its effect;
(3) As giving an opportunity for its occurrence; and
(4) As constituting the state of things under which it happened.
A fact in issue cannot be proved by showing that facts similar to it, but not part of the same transaction, have occurred at the other times. Thus, when the question is, whether a person has committed a crime, the fact that he had committed a similar crime before, is irrelevant.
ALLEGED FACT: property recovered from accused by the deceased, the murder of the deceased. The court said that unless it could be conclusively established that the property was with the deceased at the time of the offense, the question of the property would not be good enough nexus with the murder.
A TEST FOR ADMISSION OF EVIDENCE UNDER RES-GESTAE
The primary question which the judge must ask oneself is-can the possibility of concoction or distortion is disregarded?
To answer that question the judge must first consider the circumstances in which the particular statement was made, in order to satisfy him that the event was as unusual or starting or fanatic as to dominate the thoughts of the victim, so that his utterance was an instinctive reaction to that event, thus giving no real opportunity for reasoned reflection.
In order for the statement to be sufficiently ‘spontaneous’, it must be so closely associated with the event which has excited the statement, that it can be fairly stated that the mind of the declaring was still dominated by the event. Thus the judge must be satisfied that the event, which provided the trigger mechanism for the statement, was still operative.
Quite apart for the time factor, there may be a special feature in case, which relates to the possibility of concoction or distortion.
As to the possibility of a report on the facts narrated in the statement if only the ordinary fallibility of human recollection is relied on, this goes to the weight to be attached to and not the admissibility of the statement and is, therefore, a matter of jury.
To sum up, it can be laid that the test to be applied in deciding whether a hearsay statement made by a bystander or victim indicating the identity of the attacker is admissible can be put succinctly;
- Was the identification relevant?
- Was it spontaneous?
- Was there an opportunity for concoction?
- Was there any real possibility of error?
If the exited utterance is relevant, the statement will be admissible if the answer to the second question is also yes, and the answer to the other question is no,38 otherwise the statement is inadmissible. A statement may be spontaneous even though made in response to questioning.
EXPANSION OF THIS DOCTRINE
Courts have slowly broadened the scope of this section to cases like domestic violence, child witness etc.
Domestic violence and assault cases necessarily involve a startling event; they often include the issue of excited utterances. In these cases, it is only victims who can identify the alleged culprit. So such testimony of the victims must be admitted.
In India, women may not react just after the crime of rape or sexual violence because they are under the influence of such gruesome event that they do not respond immediately. It is possible that they respond after a day or two but such statement spoken can still be admitted under res gestae. If it can be proved that the victim was still under the stress of shock then such a statement can be admitted.
Usually, cases of rape take place in isolation. So there is no eye witness to such an event. Rape and domestic violence cases are different than any other crime.
The testimony of children is often the subject of excited utterance debate Usually, whenever there is a time gap, the transaction is said to end and any statement which does not form part of the transaction is inadmissible. However, in cases of children, this rule is relaxed. The rationale for expanding the exception for children emphasizes how children cope with stress because their statements are often made well after events occur at the first safe opportunity to speak.
In Uttam Singh vs. State of Madhya Pradesh,he child witness was sleeping with the deceased father at the relevant time of the incident and was awakened by the sound of the fatal blow of the axe on the neck of the deceased. Seeing it, the child shouted to his mother for help by naming the accused as the assailant.
On hearing the sounds the mother and sisters of the child and other witnesses gathered at the spot. This evidence was held to be admissible as a part of the same transaction as such shout was the natural and probable as per the facts of the case. In this case, if child witness failed to react on the spot but spoke later, it could still be admissible under sec 6.
CONCLUSION
Usually, the evidence is brought under res gestae when it cannot be brought under any other section of the Indian evidence act. The intention of law makers was to avoid injustice, where cases are dismissed due to lack of evidence. If any statement is not admissible under sec. 6 it can be admissible under Sec.157 as corroborative evidence.
Court has always minded that this doctrine should never be expanded to an unlimited extends. That is why Indian courts have always considered the test of “continuity of the transaction”. Any statement which was made after a long time gap and which was not a reaction to the event is not admissible under Sec.6 of the Evidence Act.
But courts have permitted certain statement which was spoken after a long time gap from the occurrence of the transaction because there was sufficient proof that the victim was still under the stress of excitement and so whatever was said was as a reaction to the event.
The strength of sec. 6 lies in its vagueness. The word transaction used in this section is not distinct. It varies from case to case. Each case in criminal law should be judged according to its own merit. When it is proved that the evidence forms part of the same transaction it is admissible under sec. 6 but whether it is reliable or not depends on the discretion of the Judge.
Aishwarya Says:
I have always been against Glorifying Over Work and therefore, in the year 2021, I have decided to launch this campaign “Balancing Life”and talk about this wrong practice, that we have been following since last few years. I will be talking to and interviewing around 1 lakh people in the coming 2021 and publish their interview regarding their opinion on glamourising Over Work.
If you are interested in participating in the same, do let me know.
Do follow me on Facebook, Twitter Youtube and Instagram.
The copyright of this Article belongs exclusively to Ms. Aishwarya Sandeep. Reproduction of the same, without permission will amount to Copyright Infringement. Appropriate Legal Action under the Indian Laws will be taken.
If you would also like to contribute to my website, then do share your articles or poems at adv.aishwaryasandeep@gmail.com
We also have a Facebook Group Restarter Moms for Mothers or Women who would like to rejoin their careers post a career break or women who are enterpreneurs.
We are also running a series Inspirational Women from January 2021 to March 31,2021, featuring around 1000 stories about Indian Women, who changed the world. #choosetochallenge