Report No. 74

5. Section 33, Evidence Act-Conditions for applicability.-

Section 33 of the Indian Evidence Act makes evidence given by a witness in a judicial proceeding, or before any person authorised by law to take it, relevant in a subsequent judicial proceeding, or in a later stage of the same judicial proceeding, to prove the truth of facts which it states when the witness is dead and in certain other contingencies with which we are not concerned.

Before, however, the provisions of section 33 can be invoked, it has to be shown that the case falls within the ambit of the proviso to section 33, according to which it is essential that the earlier proceeding in which the statement was given by the witness was between the same parties or their representatives in interest, that the adverse party in the first proceeding had the right and opportunity to cross-examine the witness and that the questions in issue were substantially the same in the first as well as the second proceeding.