Home · Guides · updated 2 September 2026

WhatsApp evidence in a 498A case

This is the one proceeding where chat evidence is filed roughly as often by the accused as by the complainant, and for opposite reasons. Both uses depend on the same thing: a complete record rather than a curated one.

What the complainant’s side uses it for

• Demands, in the words used. A message asking for money, a vehicle or property, from the person alleged to have demanded it, is the most direct evidence the file will contain.
• Harassment as a course of conduct. Repetition and escalation over months is visible in a transcript in a way it is not in a statement.
• Who was involved. Group conversations with in-laws are common, and they show which family members participated and which did not — which matters, given how often 498A complaints are said to over-implicate.
• Corroboration of the chronology. Dates in a complaint are recollected; dates in a transcript are recorded.
• Admissions. A message acknowledging a demand, an incident or a threat is worth more than a page of narrative.

What the accused’s side uses it for

• Contradiction of the chronology. Cordial messages on a date the complaint describes as one of cruelty, or messages from the matrimonial home during a period alleged to be one of desertion, put the complaint’s own account in issue.
• Absence of demand. A complete conversation across the relevant period, containing no demand, is a different thing from a denial.
• Over-implication. Transcripts showing which relatives were part of the conversation, and which were living elsewhere and not part of it, address the complaint that everyone was named.
• Motive and context. Messages about property, custody or a parallel dispute go to why the complaint was made when it was.
• The other side’s extract. Where a complainant has filed screenshots, producing the full certified conversation covering the same period is often the most effective answer available.

Completeness is the whole game here

Because both sides use the same conversation for opposite purposes, whichever party produces a partial record hands the other one an argument. Four screenshots invite the question of what came before and after — and in a criminal proceeding the answer will be pressed hard.

So export the range and produce it: the full conversation over the material period, certified, with the entries numbered. If parts of it are unhelpful, they are unhelpful in a document your opponent could obtain anyway, and it is far better to have produced them than to have been shown to have withheld them. See screenshots and why an export is stronger.

Producing it at the right stage

A certified record can be put before a court at more than one point — with the complaint, on an application, at trial, or before a High Court on a quashing petition. Each has its own rules about what a court will receive and what weight it will give, and the choice is counsel’s.

What is common to all of them is that the document has to be capable of being verified. A record produced with the certificate, the hash and the native file behind it can be examined by the other side and the court; a printout with no certificate is something the court is invited to take on trust, which at any stage of a criminal proceeding is a weak position.

The traps peculiar to these files

• Group conversations with the extended family. They contain third parties, and they contain a great deal that has nothing to do with the case. Group chats deals with attribution and redaction — and note that redacting the transcript breaks the hash, so the record is certified as it stands and any redacted version is produced separately and disclosed as such.
• Voice notes. Extremely common in these matters, and they cannot be printed. They are produced as files, hashed individually and tabulated against the transcript entry they belong to.
• Messages from a phone you do not control. You cannot certify a device that was never in your lawful control and regular use — see who signs Part A. Production is applied for, not assumed.
• Deleted entries. Count them and state the number. In a proceeding this contested, an unmentioned gap discovered by the other side does more damage than the gap itself.

Related: chat evidence under the PWDVA, and in maintenance proceedings, which frequently run alongside.

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.