- In a decision made in a criminal appeal, the Supreme Court established guidelines for evaluating visual evidence in criminal cases.
- The bench made up of Justices Surya Kant and JB Pardiwala noted that there are two main factors to be taken into account when determining the credibility of eyewitness testimony.
- When evaluating a witness' testimony, it is important to consider whether the testimony rings true when taken as a whole. Once this impression is established, the court should carefully examine the testimony, taking into account any flaws, shortcomings, or errors.
- It is impractical to expect a witness to serve as a tape recorder because, in most situations, witnesses are unable to recollect the precise words they used or heard and can only recall the main points of the conversation.
- The appeal court, which lacks that benefit, would give weight to the trial court's evaluation of the evidence if it had developed a judgement about the general tenor of the evidence presented, unless there were strong and compelling reasons not to.
- When eyewitnesses are thoroughly questioned, certain differences may appear; however, discarding the evidence is only appropriate when the discrepancies are inconsistent with trustworthiness.
- An unrealistic approach to judicial scrutiny is to take minor differences too seriously.
- It's not like a videotape is being played, thus it can't be anticipated that witnesses will have a photographic memory and remember every detail of the incident.
- Typically, events overwhelm witnesses, and since they may not have expected it, it may come as a surprise. As a result, it is unreasonable to expect them to mentally process everything that happens.
- Varying people have different powers of observation, so what one person could observe, another person might not.
- As witnesses estimate by guessing, it is unreasonable to expect them to know the exact facts of the incident's timing and duration.
- Even though a witness' account may be accurate, it may not seem so because of their anxiety due to the courtroom environment or cross-examination.
- The court used the aforementioned guidelines and determined that the lower court had been correct to believe the two eyewitnesses. Significantly, the court held that slight inaccuracies do not warrant the complete rejection of eyewitness testimony.
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