RTI reply not enough: Court demands oral proof for driving license

He got a driving license copy under RTI and filed it in court. The judge said — you need a human to prove how you got it.

An insurance company walked into the High Court holding a piece of paper. It was a driving license copy, obtained through the Right to Information Act (RTI, the law that lets citizens ask for government records). The company believed this single document would settle an insurance matter. The court disagreed — not because the document was fake, but because nobody had stood up in court to say how it was obtained.

The case, Reliance General Insurance Co Ltd v. Sameem, turned on a question that sounds technical but affects every litigant who uses RTI: Can a document received from a government office under RTI be treated as automatically true in court, or does someone have to testify about how it was received?

When the RTI reply arrived

The facts were straightforward. An insurance company was defending a claim. To prove its case, it needed to show that a particular driving license existed. Instead of sending an employee to the transport office to get a certified copy, the company filed an RTI application. The public information officer responded by sending a copy of the driving license.

The company then placed this RTI reply — the copy of the driving license — before the court. No witness was called. No employee stepped into the witness box to explain the process. The company argued that none of this was necessary. The RTI Act, it said, gave the document the status of a certified copy of a public document. And under Section 74 of the Evidence Act (the provision that defines which documents are considered "public documents" — like licenses, birth certificates, and court records), a certified copy could be read directly into evidence. No oral testimony required.

The problem with a silent document

The High Court saw a gap. The law, the court said, was not wrong in principle. An RTI response could qualify as a certified copy of a public document. But that did not mean every RTI response automatically walked into court without anyone explaining where it came from.

The court drew a distinction between the nature of the document and the process of proving it. A certified copy of a public document — say, a birth certificate from a municipal corporation — is admissible under Section 77 of the Evidence Act (which says certified copies of public documents can be produced as proof without calling the original officer). But that shortcut only works if the court is satisfied that the document is what it claims to be. And how does the court get satisfied? Through someone who saw the process.

In the insurance company's case, the driving license copy had simply been filed. No one appeared to testify about the attendant circumstances — the process of sending the RTI query and receiving the response. No one could be cross-examined about whether the reply was genuine, whether it had been tampered with, or whether it even came from the right office. The lawyer held up the RTI reply, its edges frayed from being folded and unfolded, but the court needed more than the paper itself.

Why the court wanted a human in the box

The court's reasoning was practical. If an employee of the company had appeared, testified about filing the RTI application, and shown the reply, the court could have tested that testimony through cross-examination. The opposing side could have asked questions about the process. That process — a witness under oath, facing questions — is how courts decide whether a document is genuine.

Without that process, the court said, it would not be possible to conclude that the document placed on record was actually a public document. The RTI reply was just a piece of paper until someone stood behind it. The judge leaned forward, tapping the paper on the bench, as if to emphasise that the document alone could not speak.

The hidden complication in the Evidence Act

This case exposed a quiet tension in the law. Section 77 of the Evidence Act says that certified copies of public documents can be read directly into evidence. That is a shortcut designed to save time — why call the registrar of births when you have a certified copy of the birth certificate? But the shortcut assumes that the copy is certified — that it bears the seal, signature, and date that make it official.

An RTI response is different. It is a copy sent by a public information officer, but it may not carry the formal certification that Section 76 of the Evidence Act (the provision that tells public officers how to certify copies) requires. The High Court did not say the RTI copy could never be used. It said that without foundational testimony — someone explaining the process — the court could not treat the document as a certified copy. The shortcut did not apply.

This meant that a document which, by its nature, was secondary evidence (a copy of an original) and which the Evidence Act intended to be read directly, still needed a witness to bridge the gap between the document and the court. The courtroom fell silent as the implication settled: a document classified as secondary evidence, meant to be read directly under Section 77, was nevertheless viewed as needing proof of foundational facts through a witness.

The procedural history and the court's logic

The case arose from an insurance dispute where one party had obtained a copy of a driving license under the RTI Act. The party contended that a response elicited under the RTI Act could be a certified copy of a public document, and thus admissible under Section 74 of the Evidence Act. The court observed that while this proposition was sound in principle, the issue in the present case was that the document had been merely placed on record without any oral evidence being led.

The court reasoned that had an employee of the appellant appeared to prove the RTI application and the reply, the court might have been able to conclude the document was genuine. However, in the absence of any person appearing to testify to this effect, and being cross-examined, it would not be possible to come to the conclusion that the document placed on record was actually a public document. The court implicitly required foundational testimony regarding the attendant circumstances — the process of sending the RTI query and receiving the response — even for a document that potentially qualified as a certified copy of a public document.

What this means for every RTI user in court

For lawyers, insurance companies, and anyone who uses RTI to gather evidence, the lesson is simple but costly. An RTI reply is not a magic ticket. It is a starting point. You still need a human being to walk into court, hold up the document, and explain the process.

The practical advice: When you file an RTI application to obtain a document for litigation, keep a record of the application, the acknowledgment, and the reply. And then — this is the part most people miss — arrange for a witness who can testify about that process. That witness could be you, your employee, or the public information officer himself. Without that testimony, the document may be excluded, and your case may fail on a technicality that could have been avoided.

This case highlighted a complication that many litigants overlook: a document classified as secondary evidence, often meant to be read directly into evidence under Section 77, was nevertheless viewed as needing proof of foundational facts or attendant circumstances through a witness. The law's shortcut had a hidden condition — and the insurance company had not met it.

Why this matters beyond this case

The implications of this ruling extend far beyond the insurance industry. Every litigant who uses RTI as an evidence-gathering tool now faces a procedural hurdle that was not always obvious. The RTI Act was designed to make government records accessible to citizens, but the Evidence Act was designed centuries earlier, with a different set of assumptions about how documents enter the courtroom. The collision between these two legal frameworks creates a gap that only oral testimony can bridge.

Consider a property dispute where a buyer obtains a copy of the sale deed from the sub-registrar's office through RTI. Under the old system, a certified copy obtained directly from the sub-registrar would be admissible under Section 77 without a witness. But an RTI copy, even if it comes from the same office, may require someone to testify about the application and the reply. The same document, from the same office, treated differently — because the method of obtaining it changed the legal status.

This asymmetry creates practical problems. Public information officers are often reluctant to appear in court to testify about RTI replies they have sent. They are busy government servants, not litigation witnesses. And the litigant who filed the RTI application — often a party to the case — may be interested but not necessarily competent to testify about the internal workings of the government office that sent the reply. The court's requirement of foundational testimony, while logically sound, places a burden on the litigant that may be difficult to discharge.

The High Court did not address this practical difficulty in its judgment. It simply stated the legal principle: without oral evidence, the document could not be admitted. But the practical consequence is that RTI users must now plan their litigation strategy differently. They cannot assume that a government reply will speak for itself in court. They must anticipate the need for a witness, and they must prepare that witness to face cross-examination about the process of sending the RTI query and receiving the response.

The broader lesson for evidence law

This case also highlights a broader tension in Indian evidence law. The Evidence Act was enacted in 1872, long before the RTI Act of 2005. The framers of the Evidence Act could not have anticipated a world where citizens could demand copies of government documents by simply writing a letter. The categories of evidence that the Evidence Act created — primary evidence, secondary evidence, certified copies, public documents — were designed for a different era.

The RTI Act, by contrast, was designed for transparency and accountability. It assumes that government records should be accessible to citizens, and that the government should respond promptly to requests for information. But the RTI Act does not address how the documents it produces should be treated in court. That gap falls to the courts to fill, case by case.

In Reliance General Insurance Co Ltd v. Sameem, the High Court filled the gap by insisting on foundational testimony. The court did not reject the RTI mechanism. It simply said that the mechanism alone was not enough. The document needed a human context — someone who could explain how it came into existence and how it was obtained. That requirement, while procedurally sound, adds a layer of complexity to every RTI-based litigation.

The courtroom fell silent as the implication settled: a document classified as secondary evidence, meant to be read directly under Section 77, was nevertheless viewed as needing proof of foundational facts through a witness. The law's shortcut had a hidden condition — and the insurance company had not met it.

THE PLAY: Never file an RTI-obtained document in court without a witness ready to testify about the application and the reply — the document alone is not enough.

The driving license copy stayed in the file. But without a human voice to explain it, the court could not hear what it said. The smell of old paper filled the courtroom, but the document remained silent, and the case turned on what was missing — not the document itself, but the person who could speak for it.