Specifications

Key Product Outputs
Judge/Benchclerk will be able to tag certain submissions as evidence
Judge/Benchclerk and parties to a case will be able to easily view the evidence of a case
Judge/Stenographer will be able to record witness testimony during an evidence hearing
Witness testimony will be signed by Witnesses and the Judge
Witness testimony will be easily accessible as evidence of a case

Prerequisites for the Module

• Case File to exist in the system

• A registered user that has joined a case

Documentary Evidence + Affidavits

1. Tagging and Untagging Submissions as Evidence: Certain submissions may be marked as evidence based on the discretion of the judge.

   1. The judge or bench clerk may tag these submissions as evidence from the UI

   2. On the discretion of the judge, submissions may be untagged as evidence during the case

2. No tagging/untagging of submissions as evidence will be possible once the Judgement has been passed/case is in ‘Disposed’ stage.

3. View and Download Evidence: Evidence will be visible to all parties of a case in the documents section. The parties can view and download evidence from the document section.

   1. Upload of Documentary Evidence

Witness Testimony

1. Testimony Formats:

   1. Witness Deposition formats will be available - with placeholders for common attributes

   2. Based on the values of attributes, the deposition template will be populated

   3. Additional content will be added by the Judge/Stenographer while recording the witness deposition.

2. Record Witness Testimony: There may be one or multiple witnesses presented as evidence.

   1. The typist will be able to select the witness the testimony is being recorded for from the complainants + respondents + witnesses added in the case file

   2. At one point, 1 witness deposition may be tagged to ‘Complainants’ or ‘Respondents’.

   3. We need to ensure that witness is added to the system before they are presented in court

   4. The typist will be able to record the Witness Testimony in writing during an Evidence Hearing

   5. The judge will be able to see in real time the witness testimony being recorded (similar to transcripts)

3. Witness Testimony Workflow:

   1. Once a witness testimony is recorded, it is sent for Digital Signing to the Witness.

   2. Once signed by the Witness, it is sent for Signing by the Judge

   3. On successful signing, the Witness testimony will be published in PDF format and auto tagged as evidence

   4. The pdf will be available for view and download in the documents tab of the ‘View Case’ File screen

   5. Once witness testimony is published, it will automatically be tagged as evidence by the system.

Functional Specifications

Functional specs are available here

Assumptions

Theme	Assumption
Evidence	Litigants/Advocates cannot tag a submission as evidence. Only bench clerk/judge will be able to tag documents as evidence
Recording of Physical evidence against cases is not required as part of NIA. If required, a copy of the same will be uploaded to the system.
	No other transcripts/depositions apart from witness deposition are considered as evidence
	Documents cannot be marked as evidence once a case is disposed
Witness	Witnesses can be added to a case by the Judge/benchclerk without an associated workflow.
Witness Testimony	Witness Testimony is only recorded in an evidence hearing.
	Only a witness and the judge have to sign a witness testimony
	For Witness testimony uploaded as evidence, the other party cannot file a response
	No voice/video recordings of witness depositions will be stored.

Ideas for Future Development

1. Recording/Tagging of Physical evidence against cases

2. Maintaining chain of custody of physical evidence

3. For witness depositions uploaded as affidavits, the format of the affidavit will not be provided

4. Translation and transcription of witness deposition in regional languages

5. Conversion of Physical Documents to Digital Formats via OCR

6. Ability to let Police provide evidence in certain cases

7. Tagging of physical and oral evidence separately. Within oral evidence, tagging chief examination and cross-examination separately

8. If an issue with marking a document as evidence, the accused can add a comment on a document as objections

9. The same evidence may be associated with multiple cases. E.g. a knife may be a piece of evidence in more than one murder case if two murders took place with it. Currently, in V1, we are tag evidence to a case