Importance Of Dying Declaration

In this paper I have tried to trace down the important improvements made in law regarding dying declaration. Dying declaration is defined in section 32 of the Indian evidence act. Section 32 provides an exception to the principle of excluding hearsay evidence. The principle behind is that a person who has the first hand knowledge of the facts of the case but who because of death, disability etc., is not able to appear in the court, then some other person should transmit this knowledge given by the person who is about to die to the court, the person who has shared the knowledge of that person will be considered as the best evidence. Thus, necessity and convenience are the underlying grounds.

Proof of a persons death, disability etc. will have to be offered in the first instance to make the evidence relevant under section 32. When a statement is admitted under any of the eight clauses of section 32, it is substantive evidence and has to be considered along with other evidence.

Section 32 (1) incorporates the principle of English law relating to what are popularly known as dying decelerations. A dying declaration means the statement of a person who has died by the way of homicide or suicide explaining the cause or circumstances of his death. As the person is dead, his statement before the court would be hearsay, which is excluded for the reasons that the party against whom it is used has no opportunity of cross- examining the original source and is not delivered under an oath.

Section 32 is an exception to the hearsay rule. The three main grounds on which dying decelerations are admitted are:

1. Death of the declarant

2. Necessity (of the evidence available under the circumstances): the victim being generally the only eye witness t...

... middle of paper ...

... but fails to answer the last formal question as to what more he wanted to say, the declaration can be relied upon. This was seen in the case kusa v state of Orissa

ANALYSIS

A dying declaration ought not be rejected because it does not contain details or suffers from minor inconsistencies. Merely because it is a brief statement, it is not to be discharged. Shortness in fact guarantees the truth and reliability of the statement.

6. DECLERANT MUST BE COMPETENT AS A WITNESS- it is necessary for the relevancy of a dying declaration that the declarant if he had lived on would have been a competent witness. Thus, in a prosecution for the murder of a child aged 4 years it was proposed to put in evidence as a dying declaration, what the child said shortly before his death. The declaration was held to be inadmissible. Thus a dying declaration of a child is inadmissible.