A Critical Study on Testimony of Eyewitnesses...

A Critical Study on Testimony of Eyewitnesses under Indian evidence act in Criminal Trial

Author Name : Dr. K Sitamanikyam, Haridasu Ravindra Kumar

ABSTRACT

An Eyewitness plays a very important role under the Indian Law. An Eyewitness is a witness who gives testimony to the act or the transaction that have been seen by himself and to which he testifies in the court. They are considered to be very significant in the court during trial in order to provide fair and just decision. Their role comes into play when the case is being built before the court of law, ie., during the initial procedure. In order to testify as an Eyewitness in the court, the person must be competent as well as qualified. They play a very vital role in the court as their as their identification of the accused may result in charging or conclusively convicting them. But they cannot always considered to be reliable as there have been certain obstacles many a times. It is often said that eyewitness testimony lead to wrongful convictions which will be further explained n the research paper. According to a study , it had been observed that unreliable or inaccurate eyewitnesses lead to more than 60% convictions that have been held wrong. However there is no inhibition on convicting a person based on a single testimony provided by a single person. There is an inveterate principle which is stated as evidence has to be weighed and not counted. The affirmation that eyewitness evidence is dependable and exact is testable and the exploration is certain that the observer’s recognizable proof is helpless without the observer’s mindfulness.  Memory reconstruction. It is a common misconception that the human memory works like a video recording, allowing people to replay events in their minds just as they occurred. The race of the witness/victim compared to the race of the aggressor is a significant factor in assessing the accuracy of eyewitness identification.

Keywords: Witnesses, Eye witnesses ,  testimony , influencing factors , Probative value ,  Psychological factors,  wrong convections , reliability of testimony.