Your WhatsApp chats can be faked. This court just said so.

A judge in Kolkata just called your phone's digital trail 'inherently vulnerable.' Here's why that changes everything.

The courtroom fell silent as the judge adjusted his glasses, the reflection of a laptop screen flickering across the lens. A man's conviction hung on electronic evidence—messages and call logs extracted from a seized phone. The other side argued it could have been fabricated in minutes. The Calcutta High Court had to decide: in a world where anyone can alter a digital file, what makes it trustworthy enough to send someone to prison?

The evidence that could not hold

Subhendu Nath stood before the Calcutta High Court challenging his conviction. The prosecution relied heavily on electronic evidence—messages and call logs drawn from a mobile device. His lawyers argued that the State had not proved this digital evidence was genuine. Anyone with a smartphone and a free editing app could have manufactured it.

The State of West Bengal countered that the evidence had been properly certified under Section 65B of the Evidence Act (the legal procedure that makes electronic records admissible in court). That certification, they said, was enough. The court should accept the evidence and uphold the conviction.

But the bench saw a deeper problem—one that went beyond this single case. The sealed evidence bag sat on the clerk's table, its edges worn from handling, the paper thin and insubstantial for the weight of the decision it carried.

The judge's warning about your phone

The Calcutta High Court observed that electronic evidence is inherently "susceptible to tampering and/or alteration and requires sensitive handling." This was not a casual remark. It was a structural observation about the nature of digital evidence itself. A message, a call log—these are not like a signed paper document. They can be edited, cloned, or fabricated with tools that are freely available online. A WhatsApp message can be screenshot, edited with a photo app, and presented as proof of a conversation that never happened. A call log can be generated from scratch using free software. The court recognised that the entire category of digital evidence carries this vulnerability.

The court then laid down a rule that changes how police and prosecutors must handle digital evidence. Any "breach in the chain of custody or improper preservation of such evidence renders it vitiated and such evidence cannot be relied in judicial proceedings." This means that even if the police have the correct Section 65B certificate (the formal certification required for electronic evidence), the evidence can still be thrown out if the police cannot prove exactly how it was collected, where it was stored, who had access to it, and how it was produced in court.

In plain terms: a perfect certificate attached to sloppy handling is worthless.

Why the chain of custody matters more than the certificate

The court explained its logic clearly. Even when the Section 65B certification is present, the reliability of electronic evidence still depends on proper collection, preservation, and production. Any "lacuna in that regard would render such evidence vulnerable with regard to its probative value"—meaning the court would give it little or no weight when deciding the case.

This is a significant shift. Before this judgment, many prosecutors believed that a properly filled Section 65B certificate was the golden ticket—get that right, and the evidence is automatically admissible. The Calcutta High Court has now made it clear: the certificate is necessary but not sufficient. The police must also prove that the evidence was handled correctly at every step.

The police constable who had seized the phone fumbled with the sealed evidence bag, its edges worn from handling. The court noted that any break in this procedural chain—any moment when the evidence was unaccounted for—could destroy its value entirely. If the phone sat on an open desk for three hours before being bagged, if the constable handed it to a colleague without logging the transfer, if the forensic lab received it without a sealed envelope—each of these moments could be fatal to the prosecution's case.

The 'crying need' for police training

The court did not stop at pointing out the problem. It also prescribed the solution. The bench highlighted that there is "a crying need to train and familiarise members of the police force in the matter of collection, reception, storage, analysis and production of electronic evidence."

This is a direct instruction to the state machinery. The court is saying that police officers cannot continue to handle digital evidence the way they handle physical evidence—picking up a phone, taking a screenshot, and calling it a day. They need systematic training in digital forensics: how to extract data without altering it, how to maintain a proper chain of custody, how to store electronic evidence securely, and how to produce it in court in a form that the judge can rely on.

The judgment implicitly confirms that proper procedures are not optional. They are required to maintain admissibility. A police force that does not train its officers in handling electronic evidence will find its cases collapsing in court. The constable who seizes a phone must know that turning it on to check the messages could alter the evidence. The officer who stores it must know that keeping it in a drawer without a log book creates a gap that a defense lawyer can exploit. The court has made clear that ignorance of these procedures is no excuse.

The Bombay High Court's different approach

Contrast this strict requirement with the pragmatism shown by the Bombay High Court in Bhupesh @ Rinku S/o Vitthalrao Tichkule v The State of Maharashtra. In that case, the accused challenged his conviction on the ground that the Section 65B certificate for CCTV footage was defective. The defense argued that without a proper certificate, the footage should be thrown out entirely.

The CCTV hard drive was produced in a sealed brown envelope with the seizure memo stapled to it. The grainy footage on the courtroom monitor showed a figure moving across a frame—the timestamp flickering at the bottom edge. The Bombay High Court agreed that the 65B certificate was "discarded... on account of its inherent deficiencies." But here is where the two courts diverge. Despite the technical failure of the certificate, the Bombay High Court found that the electronic evidence was not only admissible but was "assigned very high probative value and extensively relied upon for upholding the conviction."

How could the court rely on evidence with a defective certificate? The answer lies in the chain of custody.

When the chain of custody saves the case

The Bombay High Court concluded that the strength of the evidence rested on the "unbroken chain of custody." The police had documented exactly how the CCTV footage was seized—the hard drive was removed from the DVR at the crime scene, sealed in a brown envelope, and signed by the shop owner as a witness. They documented who handled it—the investigating officer logged it into the police station's property register. They documented where it was stored—in a locked evidence room with a temperature-controlled cabinet. And they documented how it was produced in court—the hard drive was opened in the judge's presence, with the defense lawyer watching. This detailed record of the evidence's journey—from the CCTV camera to the courtroom—was so impeccable that it overrode the technical deficiencies in the Section 65B certificate.

The lesson from these two cases is clear. The Calcutta High Court in Subhendu Nath established that a breach in the chain of custody will destroy the evidentiary value of electronic evidence, even with a perfect certificate. The Bombay High Court in Bhupesh established that an impeccable chain of custody can save the evidentiary value of electronic evidence, even with a defective certificate.

Both courts are saying the same thing from opposite directions: the chain of custody is the single most important factor in electronic evidence.

What this means for every lawyer and litigant

For criminal defense lawyers, this judgment is a powerful tool. If the prosecution relies on messages, call logs, or CCTV footage, the first question to ask is not about the Section 65B certificate. The first question is: where is the chain of custody? Can the police officer who seized the phone remember what he did with it? Was the phone kept in a sealed bag? Was there a log of who accessed it? If the answer to any of these questions is vague, the evidence may be vulnerable.

For prosecutors, the message is equally clear. Do not rely solely on the Section 65B certificate. Build a detailed chain of custody document for every piece of electronic evidence. Train your investigating officers to document every step. A case that depends on digital evidence can be won or lost on the quality of that documentation.

THE PLAY: When challenging or defending electronic evidence, argue the chain of custody first—a perfect Section 65B certificate cannot cure a single break in the handling record.

The judge's final message to the police

The Calcutta High Court's judgment in Subhendu Nath v State of West Bengal is not just a ruling on one case. It is a directive to the entire criminal justice system. The court has told the police: train your people, or watch your evidence get thrown out. It has told the courts: do not accept electronic evidence at face value, no matter how pristine the certificate looks. And it has told every citizen: your messages, your call logs—they can be faked. The law now knows it. And it has built the safeguards to prove it.