Guide · updated 1 September 2026

Photographs, voice notes and documents

Most guidance on chat evidence treats the conversation as text. Often the text is the least of it — the photograph, the invoice, the thirty-second voice note is the evidence, and it needs producing properly.

Why attachments need their own treatment

A transcript is printable and a photograph is not. An exhibit that prints the words IMG-20240612-WA0007.jpg (file attached) and stops has recorded that a file existed, not what it showed. Meanwhile a bundle of loose image files with no connection to the conversation invites the question of where each one came from.

What is needed is both: the file itself, and an unambiguous link between the file and the entry in the conversation that produced it.

Hash each file, not only the archive

The archive hash in Part A fixes the whole export. That is necessary, but it is coarse: it cannot identify one photograph. Hashing each attachment separately means a single image can be produced, verified and put to a witness on its own, and its hash can be recomputed by anyone holding the file.

Tying media to the transcript

A reference has to work in both directions. From the transcript, a reader should be able to find the file; from the file, a reader should be able to find the entry it came from. In practice that means:

• Number every entry in the transcript permanently, so an attachment can be cited as belonging to a numbered entry.
• Give every attachment a reference in the annexure, and print that reference against the entry in the transcript.
• Reconcile both ways, and state the result: how many attachments the transcript names, how many the archive holds, and any file that appears on one side only.

What can and cannot be printed

• Photographs and images reproduce directly. One to a page, at a size a court can actually look at, with the filename, size and hash beneath.
• Documents — a PDF invoice, a Word file — can be rendered page by page into the exhibit.
• Voice notes, video and audio cannot be printed at all. They are tabulated in the exhibit — filename, type, duration where known, size, hash — and delivered as files alongside it.
• Contact cards and stickers are usually incidental, but they are files in the archive and an honest reconciliation accounts for them.

Delivering the originals

The exhibit is a document; the attachments are evidence in their own right. Both need to reach the court. Delivering the originals alongside the exhibit, with a manifest listing each file and its hash, means the court can open the actual photograph rather than a reproduction of it — and can confirm the file it opens is the file that was certified.

If an exhibit states that files are delivered with it, they must in fact be delivered. A document that says so and does not is a false statement on its own face.

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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.