AIM OF PROJECT REPORT

The aim of this project report is to investigate the manner in which the res gestae
doctrine has been characterised under Common Law, and to trace its development
as an exception to the exclusionary hearsay rule. It also seeks to evaluate the extent
and nature of its import in the provisions of the Indian Evidence Act, 1872, and the
manner in which it has been construed by the Indian Judiciary.

RESEARCH QUESTIONS

 How has res gestae been defined under Common Law and to what extent has
it been utilised as an exception to the hearsay rule?

 Why is a strict interpretation of res gestae problematic and how did the
Common Law courts overcome this difficulty while considering the
relevance of admissible hearsay?

 Has res gestae been effectively codified under the Criminal Justice Act,
2003? What are the implications of this construction?

 How does the Indian Evidence Act, 1872, define res gestae, if at all? What
are the relevant provisions that deal with the transaction of an event and how
are they used as an exception to the hearsay rule?

 How does the formulation of res gestae under this enactment compare with
its evolution under Common Law?
 MEANING OF RES GESTAE
Res gestae has no exact English translation. A literal translation means “something deliberately
undertaken or done.

Res gestae has been defined as “Things done, or liberally speaking, the facts of the transaction
explanatory of an act or showing a motive for acting; incidental to a main fact and explanatory
of it; including acts and words which are so closely connected with a main fact as will constitute
a part of it, and even speaking for themselves though the instinctive words and acts of
participants not the words and acts of participants when narrating the events, the circumstances,
facts and declaration which grow out of the main fact, are admissible when illustrative of such
act.”

as the Res Gestae rule has been declared to be incapable of any precise definition and it has been
applied to so many different and unrelated situations that it has been said that the difficulty of
formulating a description of Res Gestae which will serve all circumstances seems
insurmountable. It would be little short of miraculous if one single doctrine of Res Gestae would
suffice for every situation.

 . Although it was impossible to envisage any settled, universally acceptable test to

adjudge whether hearsay be admissible on the basis of the principle of res gestae, the
Courts in England have made a laudable attempt to identify the nature of this exception.

Cockburn C.J. in R v. Bedingfield

 A mechanism for determining the admissibility of statements that gained broader

acceptance was proposed, with substantial clarity, by the Privy Council in 1956, through
a consideration of the purpose for which the statement is to be admitted. The following
classification endured through subsequent judicial interpretation:
 ‘It is hearsay and inadmissible when the object of the evidence is to establish the truth of
what is contained in the statement. It is not hearsay and is admissible when it is proposed
to establish by the evidence, not the truth of the statement, but the fact that it was made.’
 One of the leading decisions in relation to the res gestae exception is that of the Privy
Council in Ratten v. The Queen, which dealt with the admissibility of the statement of a
telephone operator who received a call from the deceased minutes before she was
 allegedly murdered by her husband. The Council characterised the statement as original
evidence of ‘verbal facts’, as opposed to hearsay evidence, as the object of admitting the
statement was not to establish the truth of the statement made, but merely to establish the
fact that it was made. The following observation was made:
 ‘Words spoken are facts just as much as any other action by a human being. If the
speaking of the words is a relevant fact, a witness may give evidence that they were
spoken. A question of hearsay only arises when the words spoken are relied on
"testimonially," i.e., as establishing some fact narrated by the words.’
 Following the decision of the Privy Council in Ratten’s Case, the law on this point was
consolidated decisively in the celebrated case of R v. Andrews Lord Ackner of the House
of Lords exhaustively dealt with this exception, moving away from the simple question of
whether the statement was a fact to be admitted as original evidence, to the more complex
one of whether the truth of the statement relayed could be admissible as an exception to
the hearsay rule, and by what justification. This issue was of considerable significance as
the statement of the victim was one which, if admitted, would disclose the identities of
his assailants

The Crown defended Ratten by suggesting that in order to overcome the difficulties of
Bedingfield’s strict application of the res gestae exception, the standard of ‘substantial
contemporaneity’ be adopted to protect statements made under conditions of involvement in the
event, though not formally a part of the transaction

SECTION 6 OF INDIAN EVIDENCE ACT

. S. 6 states;
“Facts which, though not in issue, are so connected with a fact in issue as to
form part of the same transaction, are relevant, whether they occurred at the
same time and place or at different times and places”
Res Gestae is based on the belief that because certain statements are made naturally,
spontaneously and without deliberation during the course of an event, they leave little room for
misunderstanding/misinterpretation upon hearing by someone else (i.e. by the witness who will
later repeat the statement to the court) and thus the courts believe that such statements carry a
high degree of credibility.1
Statements which can be admitted into evidence as Res Gestae fall into three headings-
1. Words or phrases which either form part of, or explain a physical act,
2. Exclamations which are so spontaneous as to believe concoction, and
3. Statements which are evidence as to someone's state of mind.
(In some jurisdictions the Res Gestae exception has also been used to admit police sketches.)
This section is used by the lawyers as a last resort so; there is not much case law on this section.
The rationale behind this is the spontaneity and immediacy of such statement that there is hardly
any time for concoction. So, such statement must be contemporaneous with the acts which
constitute the offence or at least immediately thereafter. Res gestae includes facts which form
part of same transaction. So, it is pertinent to examine what is transaction, when does it start and
when does it ends. If any fact fails to link itself with the main transaction, it fails to be a res
gestae and hence inadmissible
 statements made by the complaining party, after all action on the part of wrong-doer has
ceased and some time has elapsed do not form part of Res Gestae and should be excluded
 Section 6 uses words like transaction, bystanders etc. It is important to understand the
implications of these words to know the scope of this section.

A transaction, as the term used in this section is defined by a single name, as a crime, a
contract, a wrong or any other subject of enquiry which may be in issue.

. TRANSACTION
A fine working test of deciding what transaction is; is proximity of time, unity or proximity of
place, continuity of actions, and community of purpose or design.2But the key test must be
continuity of action and community of purpose. The condition for admissibility of a statement
made by a person who was at the scene of occurrence is the proximity of time, the proximity of
the police station and the continuity of action.

1
“Doctrine of Res Gestae”via http://engllb.blogspot.in/2013/01/doctrine-of-resgestae_
19.html
2
Banga Ch vs Annada 35 CLJ 527
If any statement is a reaction to the situation than it forms part of the same transaction but if it is
a response to the question, the transaction ends with the intervention of a third party and such
acts or admissible cannot be made admissible under sec.6 of the Indian evidence act.
 To form a particular statement as a part of the same transaction, utterance must be
simultaneous with the incident or soon after it so as to make it reasonably certain that the
speaker is still stress of excitement in respect of the transaction in question.

BYSTANDERS –
The term bystanders used in sec. 6 means all the person present at the time of incident Where on
hearing sounds of gunshots from the house of the victim, his neighbours run to the spot within
minutes and he told them the names of the assailants who had shot at him and his wife, his
statement to them was relevant under this section 6.

TEST FOR ADMISSION OF EVIDENCE UNDER RES-

GESTAE
The primary question which the judge must ask oneself is-can the possibility of concoction or
distortion is disregarded?

To answer that question the judge must first consider the circumstances in which the particular
statement was made, in order to satisfy him that the event was as unusual or starting or fanatic as
to dominate the thoughts of the victim, so that his utterance was an instinctive reaction to that
event, thus giving no real opportunity for reasoned reflection. In such a situation the judge would
be entitled to conclude that the involvement or the pressure of the event would exclude the
possibility of concoction or distortion, providing that the statement was made in conditions of
approximate but not exact contemporaneity.

In order for the statement to be sufficiently ‘spontaneous’ it must be so closely associated with
the event which has excited the statement, that it can be fairly stated that the mind of the
declaring was still dominated by the event. Thus the judge must be satisfied that the event, which
provided the trigger mechanism for the statement, was still operative. Quite apart from the time
factor, there may be special feature in case, which relate to the possibility of concoction or
distortion. As to the possibility of report on the facts narrated in the statement if only the
ordinary fallibility of human recollection is relied on, this goes to weight to be attached to and
not the admissibility of the statement and is therefore a matter of jury.3 If the exited utterance is
relevant, the statement will be admissible if the answer to the second question is also yes, and the
answer to the other question is no,4 otherwise the statement is inadmissible. A statement may be
spontaneous even though made in response to questioning

CONTEMPORANITY AND SPONTANEITY

This general principle is based on the experience that, under certain external circumstances of
physical shock, a stress of nervous excitement may be produced which stills the reflective
faculties and removes their control, so that the utterance which then occurs is a spontaneous and
sincere response to the actual sensations and perceptions already produced by the external
shock.5The witness’ state of nervous tension was of utmost importance

CRITIQUE OF EXCITED UTTERANCE

 Psychological studies support this observation and indicate that the difference between
the time of cognition and the time when the declarant may begin to fabricate is so small
that it is often impossible to measure without instruments. The time required to craft a lie
is slight--sometimes only a matter of seconds

 Additionally, some psychological data indicate that, as a self-protective device, witnesses

may initially suppress unpleasant memories, which only emerge in later, calmer times
Such data argue directly against application of the excited utterance exception, because
the witness’ ability to recall will not be at its best so near in time to the traumatic event.

CONCLUSION

3
R vs Pennel
4
R vs West, unreported, CA
5
See John Henry Wigmore, Evidence in Trials at the Common Law p. 1362 (James
H. Chadbourn ed., 1978).
Generally evidence is brought under resgestae when it cannot be brought under any other section
of Indian evidence Act. The objective of law makers was to avoid injustice, where cases are
rejected due to lack of evidence. If any statement is not admissible under sec. 6 it can be
Admissible under sec.157 as corroborative evidence. Court has always minded that this doctrine
should never be stretched to an unlimited extends. That is why Indian courts have always
considered the test of “continuity of the transaction”. Any statement which was made after a long
time gap and which was not a effect to the event is not admissible under sec.6 of the evidence
act. But courts have allowed certain statement which was spoken after a long time gap from the
incidence of the transaction, because there was satisfactory proof that the victim was still under
the anxiety of excitement and so whatever was said was as a reaction to the event.

Identifying the res gestae in individual cases requires careful consideration of two opposing
forces; the reliability of the statement to be admitted and the possibility of prejudice to the
accused. The dangers associated with admitting hearsay, including the risk of distortion,
prejudice because of the inability to cross-examine and the fallibility of jury interpretation, must
be taken into account.

While Common Law has exhaustively examined many facets of the res gestae exception to the
hearsay rule, and despite the codification of principles settled in Ratten and Andrews, the scope
of this exception is indeterminable beyond the general principles already accepted. The Indian
Judiciary has chosen to construe res gestae to transactions strictly defined by Section 6 of the
Indian Evidence Act, 1872, and has failed to appreciate its holistic construction in view of other
relevant provisions. However, just as the Criminal Justice Act, 2003, has circumvented the task
of conclusively defining res gestae by including a safety-net provision for admitting statements
in the interest of justice, so also the Indian Judiciary has effectively breached the strict
interpretation of Section 6 by avoiding entirely the principle of res gestae and relying on other
statutory provisions. While this has undeniably broadened the scope of admissibility, the
comparatively strict interpretation of res gestae under Section 6 is certainly limiting in view of
the Common Law position and its embodiment in the Criminal Justice Act, 2003.

The power of sec. 6 lies in its vagueness. The word transaction used in this section is not
different. It varies from case to case. Each and every case in criminal law should be judged
according to its own merit. When it is established that the evidence forms part of the same
transaction it is admissible under sec. 6 but whether it is dependable or not is the discretion of the
Judge.