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The Section 63 certificate, field by field

Section 63(4) of the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam does not merely require a certificate. It requires one in the form of the Schedule, in two parts. This is that form, entry by entry, with what each entry is asking for.

Why there is a form at all

Section 65B of the Evidence Act required a certificate but never said what it should look like. Practice diverged: some were a paragraph, some were ten pages, and a great many recited conditions the deponent had not actually considered. Section 63(4) closes that by prescribing the form — a Schedule in two parts, with the particulars of the record and of the device set out in it.

The practical consequence is that a certificate can now be wrong on its face. An entry left blank is visible. A hash that is absent, or stated without naming the algorithm, is visible. That cuts both ways, and it is the reason to fill the form properly rather than approximately.

Part A — the person producing the record

Part A is the deponent’s own certificate. It is signed by the person who was in fact in control of the device, and it says four things: where the record came from, that the device was working, that the information reached it in the ordinary course, and what the hash of the record is.

PART A — CERTIFICATE BY THE PERSON PRODUCING THE ELECTRONIC RECORD

I, ______________________________, son / daughter of ________________
______________________, aged ______ years, resident of _______________
____________________________________________, state on oath:

1.  The electronic record at Annexure A was produced from the device
    described in Schedule II, which was during the material period in
    my lawful control and in regular use.

2.  The said device was operating properly; or, where it was not, no
    such deficiency affected the accuracy or the contents of the
    electronic record.

3.  The information contained in the record reproduces, or is derived
    from, information supplied to the device in the ordinary course of
    its activities.

4.  The hash value stated below was computed upon that record.

        Hash algorithm ....  SHA-256
        Hash value ........  ____________________________________________
                             ____________________________________________

I declare the above to be true to the best of my knowledge,
information and belief.


____________________        Date ____________      Place ____________
Signature of deponent

Name ______________________________

What each clause is actually asking

• Lawful control and regular use. Not ownership. The question is whether this phone was yours to use and whether you used it ordinarily — not whether your name is on the bill. Someone certifying a chat from a phone they picked up once has a problem here.
• Operating properly. The clause anticipates that it may not have been, and asks whether any defect affected the record. A phone that crashed twice last year did not affect a conversation from last week; say so rather than pretending the device was flawless.
• Ordinary course. The messages arrived because people were messaging, not because the record was assembled for the litigation. A conversation exported for a case is fine; a conversation staged for a case is what this clause is aimed at.
• The hash value. Computed on the file as it was produced, before it was opened, renamed, re-saved or re-zipped. Name the algorithm. A bare sixty-four characters is ambiguous, and a hash taken after the file was handled certifies the wrong file.

Only the first block — who you are, and which conversation — is strictly needed to make the certificate legible. The device particulars in Schedule II are what make it hard to attack, and they are the entries most often left empty. See who should sign Part A if there is any doubt about the right deponent.

Part B — the expert

Part B is a second certificate, signed by an expert, going to the technical particulars rather than to the provenance. Its function, as the Supreme Court put it in Pune Bar Association v. Union of India (2026), is to provide an additional layer of authenticity to the secondary electronic evidence.

PART B — CERTIFICATE BY THE EXPERT

I, ______________________________, do hereby certify that I have
examined the electronic record referred to in Part A above and state
as follows:

    Hash algorithm ..............  SHA-256
    Hash value ..................  ______________________________________
    Source file .................  ______________________________________
    File size ...................  ______________ bytes
    Entries in the record .......  ______________
    Participants identified .....  ______________
    Entries showing media omitted  ______________
    Entries deleted before export  ______________
    Media files present .........  ______________
    Date range of conversation ..  ____________ to ____________
    Device / record particulars .  as at Schedules I and II

1.  I have examined the electronic record at Annexure A and the
    particulars set out at Part A.
2.  I have independently verified the hash value stated above using
    the algorithm named.
3.  The technical particulars set out above are correct to the best of
    my knowledge, information and belief.

Name _______________  Qualification _______________  Organisation ______


____________________        Date ____________      Place ____________
Signature of expert

Two things go wrong here more than anything else. The first is treating Part B as a formality and having it signed by whoever is available — the Schedule wants an expert, and the court has to be satisfied of the expertise. The second is having the expert adopt a hash handed to them rather than recomputing it, which makes clause 2 untrue. Who can sign Part B deals with the qualification question, which the Supreme Court has addressed without settling.

The Schedules — particulars of the record and the device

The declaration is short because the detail sits in the Schedules. Two blocks, and both are checkable:

• Particulars of the electronic record. Source application, how it was exported, original filename, file type, size, character encoding, date range of the conversation, number of entries, participants, time zone, and when it was produced.
• Particulars of the device. Type, make and model, colour, serial number, IMEI or other identifier, operating system, the number the account runs on, and the deponent’s relationship to the device.

None of this is decorative. An opponent who wants to say the record came from somewhere else has to work against a filled-in device block; against an empty one, they only have to ask.

Where this wording comes from

The form above is a working skeleton in the order the Schedule sets its entries out, drafted to be filled in and settled by an advocate. It is not a reproduction of the statutory text, and it is not a substitute for reading the Schedule as enacted. Where the two differ, the Schedule governs.

The same goes for anything else offering a “Section 63 certificate template”, including this one: a template is a starting point for a document you sign on oath. Read what you are signing.

Filling it for a WhatsApp conversation

1. Take the export from the device, with media if the attachments matter. How to export sets out both platforms.
2. Hash the file before anything else touches it, and record the algorithm alongside the value.
3. Fill Schedule II from the phone itself — Settings will give you the model, the operating system version and, on most handsets, the IMEI.
4. Complete Part A in the name of the person who held that device, and have them sign it.
5. Have Part B completed by someone who can actually recompute the hash and speak to the particulars.
6. File the certified file, not a re-saved copy of it. See filing chat evidence.

Section63 fills this form from the export itself: Part A pre-filled from the particulars you enter, Part B with the twelve technical entries already computed so the expert verifies rather than re-derives them, and both Schedules populated from the file. What it cannot do is be the deponent or the expert, and it does not pretend to.

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This guide explains procedure and states the law as we understand it. It is not legal advice, and Aarohan Enterprises is not a law firm. Whether a court admits a particular record, and what weight it gives it, is for that court to decide. Have an advocate settle anything you intend to file.