Res Gestae -a Judicial Analysis

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Res Gestae is a Latin phrase that loosely translates to "things done," "transaction facts," "explanatory of an act," or "demonstrating a motive for acting."

It includes words and actions that are so closely related to a central idea that they become part of it; without understanding of these connections, the central idea may not be understood correctly. It even speaks for itself, even though the participants' natural words and actions—rather than their own words and actions—while recounting the events.

There are two interpretations of the phrase Res Gestae. In its narrowest meaning, it refers to actions that result in the right or obligation in issue.

Res Gestae, in its narrow sense, imports the idea of activity by an individual causing the consequences for which the liability is sought to be enforced in action.

Res Gestae is most useful in criminal law when it comes to the contemporaneity of statements to occurrences; nonetheless, contemporaneous statements are permitted if they are pertinent, support, and clarify the topics in question.

Regardless of whether they happened at the same time and location, the facts included in Section 6 are related to the fact at hand and so constitute "part of the same transaction."

Res Gestae's central tenet is that the claims are delivered without any room for interpretation or negotiation. These are innate responses to the relevant occurrence.

When a person has no reasonable time to fabricate a tale, they make a Res Gestae assertion. This strengthens their legitimacy.

INTRODUCTION

The most challenging aspect of criminal jurisprudence is determining what kind of evidence is admissible in court as a proof . Res Gestae is one of the tenets of the law of evidence. The foundation of the Res Gestae doctrine is the supposition that all pertinent aspects of the sequence of events are taken into account before the judiciary, as part of the criminal justice system, makes its final decision. This ensures that no evidence is excluded due to extraneous factors, even though specific technicalities vary from case to case.

The establishment of the criminal law's res gestate theory, which requires the proof of certain pertinent facts, is the rationale for this. Without the assistance of some missing facts, the entire scenario cannot be proven. It might be demonstrated by another piece of evidence that is investigated and designated as Res Gestae doctrine. The Latin expression Res Gestae means "forming part of the same transaction." It refers to the pertinent segment of the event that is either directly or indirectly related to the main event transaction.

In the Realm of the Indian Evidence Act of 1872, Section 6 is a special and important section. This section addresses the admissibility of specific comments made by those participating in a particular event and is sometimes confused with the idea of "Res Gestae." The complexities of Res Gestae and Section 6 will be examined in this essay, along with how they add to our knowledge of spontaneous remarks in court.

“Things done” or “the transaction” is how the Latin phrase “Res Gestae” is defined. Res Gestae, as used in legal evidence, describes remarks made by an individual in response to an unexpected or surprising incident. Since it is assumed that these statements are genuine and unfabricated, they are regarded as reliable and acceptable.

The ideas of Res Gestae are enhanced by Section 6 of the Indian Evidence Act. When a statement refers to a pertinent fact or occurrence, it deals with the admissibility of comments made by a person who is deceased or missing. The following are the main clauses:

1. Statement about Cause of Death: A person's statements on the cause of their death or the events that led up to it are acceptable sources of evidence.
2. Statement on Transactions, Matters, or Events: When the individual making the statement is unable to be called as a witness, statements they make about any transaction, occurrence, or incident pertinent to the case are admissible.
3. Statements Affecting Rights or Interests: When a witness is unavailable, statements that have an impact on their legal rights or interests may be admitted.
4. Res Gestae Aspect: This section exemplifies the idea of Res Gestae since it permits the admission of remarks made in the immediate aftermath of an incident, even in cases when the witnesses are unable to appear in court.

The hearsay rule exemption and the Res Gestae principle were examined in R v. Bedingfield, According to Lord Justice Cockburn, the statement was not admissible since it was made by her after everything had already happened. According to him, the statement was made after the throat-cutting transaction was complete and was not a part of the transaction itself. This ruling has been essentially overturned, but it nevertheless serves as an excellent example of the previous definition of the Res Gestae exception, which frequently had unfair effects. In actuality, the Bedingfield case ruling was overly rigid. But in the case of Ratten v. R, this ruling was overturned because common law gave the Res Gestae doctrine a more expansive and liberal definition. "Evidence would have been admissible as part of the Res Gestae because not only was there a close association in place and time between the statement and the shooting, but also the way the statement came to be made, in a call for the police and the tone of voice used showed intrinsically that the statement was being forced from the wife by an overwhelming pressure of contemporary events," according to Lord Wilberforce in the case of Ratten v. Queen.

RES GESTAE

Res Gestae is defined as "things done" or, more broadly, "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," and "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 participants' instinctive words and acts when narrating the events, the circumstances, facts and declarations which grow out of the main fact, and contemporaneous with it and serve to illustrate its character or these circumstances which are the atomic and undersigned incidents of a specific contested behavior and are acceptable when they serve as an example of that act.

It was noted in Babulal v. W.I.T Ltd , that the legal declaration included in Section 6 of the Evidence Act is commonly referred to as Res Gestae. Res Gestae is a word that has been defined several times and has been regarded as having protean significance. It has been stated that it is impossible to provide a description of Res Gestae that will work in every context since it lacks a definite definition and has been used to a wide range of unconnected events.[11]If a single Res Gestae concept could be applied to every circumstance, it would be nothing short of amazing.

There must be a primary fact or transaction. Only statements that arise from the primary transaction and help to characterize it, are contemporaneous with it, and receive some degree of credit from it are acceptable. The primary transaction may take place over a longer or shorter period of time, depending on its nature and characteristics. It is not always limited to a certain moment in time.

Res Gestae is broadly defined as matter that is incidental to and explanatory of the main fact; this includes actions and words that are contemporaneous with the main fact and serve to illustrate its character, but are also so closely related as to constitute a part of the transaction without the main fact's knowledge. There are two interpretations of the phrase Res Gestae. In its narrowest meaning, it refers to actions that result in the right or obligation in issue. Res Gestae, in its narrow sense, imports the idea of activity by an individual causing the consequences for which the liability is sought to be enforced by legal action. Res Gestae is most useful in criminal law when it comes to the contemporaneity of statements to occurrences; nonetheless, contemporaneous statements are permitted if they are pertinent, support, and clarify the topics in question.

Res Gestae Under Indian Evidence Act

Any act, omission, or statement that sheds light on the nature of the transaction or discloses its actual nature or character need to be considered a part of it, and documentation of it ought to be obtained[13].A fact or event may become difficult or even impossible to understand if it is stated in isolation without consideration for its historical context, place of residence, or surrounding conditions. It is possible for certain facts or situations to be so intimately related to the fact at hand that they really constitute an integral component of the same transaction. The Evidence Act does not make use of the phrase Res Gestae. However, section 6 is examined under Res Gestae's direction. Section 6 deals with facts related to the fact in question in order to make them "part of the same transaction," regardless of whether they happened at the same time and location. Determining whether  fact is a part of the same transaction determines its relevance; this is not unexpected given the early reading of the Res Gestae exception. It should be mentioned that the Act makes it clear that utterances are included in the definition of "fact."

Essentials of section 6

Section 6 includes the following aspects:

1. The act must have happened in the same place.

2. There must be extremely little or no time between events so that no time can be used to create an invented narrative.

3. Witness must act in the same location and time as the offense was done.

4. The Gestures made by victim when dying

5.FIR turns into Res Gestae

A Transcation

In this section, "transaction" refers to any illegal conduct, contract, wrongdoing, or other potential subject of investigation under a single definition. It encompasses the immediate cause and effect of an act or event as well as its collection of relevant circumstances, the other necessary preconditions of its existence, associated with it, all at an appropriate distance from the time, pace, and cause and effect.Reliable markers of the type of transaction include the closeness of time, unity or proximity of place, continuity of acts, and community of purpose or design.

Bystander

In section 6, everyone in the place at the time of the occurrence is referred to as a bystander. Their testimony is crucial when many people who arrived at the site quickly after a murder were told by the eyewitnesses who the two culprits were. As a result, the proclamation has to be mostly contemporaneous with the incident in question and attempt to illustrate and explain it.

Test for Res Gestae

1.According to the first test, a fact might be considered to be a part of the same transaction as the fact in question if there is a causal relationship between it and the fact that is meant to be presented as evidence, or vice versa. But since every occurrence is the result of the combined influence of many effects, this test is really not very useful. Therefore, the fundamental goal of limiting the evidence in a court of law to relevant facts is defeated if all of these causes and consequences are to be regarded as significant and testimony of all of these facts is allowed.

2. According to the second test, information related to closeness in both time and location would fall under this area. Undoubtedly, events that occur around the same time and location might be considered closely related and, therefore, pertinent under this provision. However, this is insufficient because the section itself considers the possibility that facts related to the fact at hand may occur at various times and locations and be included in the same transaction.

3. According to a third test, there should be a consistent purpose and course of action between the fact that is being disputed and the fact for which proof is being sought. It is suggested that this is similarly worthless, only replacing one ambiguous term with another.

Judicial observation

According to Indian judiciary interpretation, Res Gestae applies only to assertions made in the immediate aftermath of an occurrence or concurrently with it, not "at such interval of time" as to permit fabrication.

1.State of Andhra pradesh vs  panna Satyanarayan -The defendant killed both his wife and daughter. The father of the dead wife made the statement that the accused's father informed him over the phone that the deceased had been slain by his son. Lack of a determination about whether the information that the accused's father provided to the deceased's father, indicating that the accused had killed the deceased, was provided either at the time the crime was committed or right away after, constituting a part of the same transaction. Section does not believe the statement to be relevant.

2. Bishna alias Bhiswadeb Mahato & Others v. State of West Bengal - The moment the incident occurred, the two witnesses arrived at the scene. They discovered the deceased victim's dead corpse, another unconscious victim who had been injured, the deceased victim's mother sobbing, and an injured witness. The injured witness and other witnesses told them about the whole affair, including the roles that each accused person and others had played. These two witnesses' testimony supports both the prosecution's witnesses' testimony and the claims stated in the F.I.R.Section 6 permits the admission of their evidence.

3. Jagser v. State of Haryana-In this instance, the deathbed declaration is supported by the testimony of Mangat Ram, the deceased's brother Ruldu, who gave an eyewitness account that supports the prosecution's case on relevant points. Although they claim that both accused took Yashin Khan and his wife Pinki to a room in the house to settle their differences, they do not claim that the accused set Yashin Khan on fire in front of them. Instead, they claim that after a while, Yashin Khan, who was on fire, ran out of the house. By using the res gestae concept, it becomes evident that there is a definite connection between the two accused and the crime. The medical data appropriately supports the ocular evidences.

Res Gestae An Exception to Hearsay

The rule that hearsay evidence is not evidence is broken by Res Gestae. As a hearsay statement on remarkable evidence or conditions that was made while the witness was still feeling the effects and stress of excitement induced by that event or circumstance, Res Gestae is admissible as an exception to the hearsay rule. The justification offered for this claim is that the witness, in delivering such a remarkable hearsay testimony, is only able to communicate the truth because the occurrence was so shocking and lacks the ability for reflection. The case of Sukhar v State of U.P. posed the question of whether the witness could testify to what the victim had told him. It was decided that hearsay is not admissible as evidence in general, although Section 6 is an exception. To be considered a part of the same transaction, however, it must be proven that "the statement was about contemporaneous with the fact in issue and there should not be any interval for fabrication." The witness's evidence is acceptable in this instance. When the witness arrived at the scene of the accident, they discovered the unconscious victim's injuries and the dead corpse of the victim.

Criticism

There were indications that the phrase Res Gestae was not universally accepted even in its early stages of development. Its convenient obscurity helped it gain popularity. Wigmore has also expressed his disapproval of the phrase Res Gestae. It is "not only entirely useless, but even positively harmful," according to what he has written. The expression is pointless as "every rule of Evidence to which it has ever been applied exists as a part of some other well-established principle and can be explained in the terms of that principle."The term is detrimental since "by its ambiguity it invites the confusion of one rule with another and thus creates uncertainty as to the limitations of both." .

Conclusion

When evidence cannot be submitted under any part of the Indian Evidence Act, it is often introduced under Res Gestae. The lawmakers wanted to prevent cases from being rejected for lack of evidence, which would be unfair. The courts have always understood that this doctrine should never be applied indefinitely. In criminal law, each case need to be evaluated on its own merits. Section 6 permits the admission of evidence where it is demonstrated to be a part of the same transaction; nevertheless, the judge will determine whether or not the evidence is credible. This doctrine's gap is caused by its complexity and ambiguity.

This doctrine's vagueness has drawn harsh criticism. As a result, it is clear that the original meaning of "acts done" (actus) to form Res Gestae has expanded to include any acts or statements made during the commission of a crime, whether they occur at the same location or at a different time. These are considered to form part of the same transaction and are therefore admissible under the doctrine of Res Gestae. "The phrase Res Gestae is, in the current state of the law, not only entirely useless, but even positively harmful," says Dean Wigmore. As such, it should be completely rejected as a harmful component of our legal phrasing. It must never be brought up.