RTI-Obtained “True Copies” of Private Documents Are Not Public Documents; Secondary Evidence Requires Section 65(a)-(c) Foundation

1. Introduction

The litigation arises out of Special Civil Suit No.494 of 2011 (Surat) filed by the plaintiffs for partition, maintenance, declaration, and permanent injunction against the defendants. During trial, at the close of the plaintiffs’ evidence stage, the plaintiffs filed Exh.300 seeking to place additional documents on record (list at Exh.301) and to have them exhibited, asserting that they were received under the Right to Information Act, 2005 (“RTI”) from the Surat Municipal Corporation (“SMC”), and therefore were admissible as certified copies/public documents.

The defendants objected, but the trial court treated the documents as public documents and exhibited them. In the High Court, the dispute was confined (by a prior order dated 25/11/2021) to three items at serial nos. 12, 13, 14 of Exh.301: (i) two “completion certificates” issued by an architect (Tee Square) for two bungalows, and (ii) a xerox copy of an alleged “family division/partition agreement”—the genuineness of which was also stated to be under criminal investigation.

2. Summary of the Judgment

The Gujarat High Court partly allowed the petition and modified the impugned order. It held that:

• Private documents obtained under RTI do not automatically become “public documents” under Section 74(2) of the Indian Evidence Act, 1872.
• RTI “true copies” of private documents are not “certified copies” admissible under Section 65(e) or Section 65(f) of the Evidence Act merely because they were supplied by a public authority.
• Such documents can be used as secondary evidence only if the party first lays a proper foundation under Section 65(a), (b), or (c) of the Evidence Act (loss/non-production/possession by opposite party, etc.).
• Accordingly, the three documents at serial nos. 12–14 of Exh.301 were directed to be de-exhibited for the present; they may be exhibited later if proved according to law.

The Court also held that the trial court’s assumption-based approach amounted to a gross error of law warranting correction under Article 227, referring to Waryam Singh v. Amarnath - AIR 1954 SC 215.

3. Issues Framed by the High Court

4. Analysis

4.1 Statutory Framework Applied

The Court anchored its reasoning in the Evidence Act’s structure for proving documents:

• Sections 61–64: Contents proved by primary or secondary evidence; primary evidence is the original document.
• Section 63: Defines secondary evidence, including “certified copies” under the Act.
• Section 65: Enumerates cases where secondary evidence is permissible; critically:
  • Section 65(e): secondary evidence when the original is a public document under Section 74;
  • Section 65(f): secondary evidence when a certified copy is permitted by the Evidence Act or any other law in force;
  • For (e) or (f), only a certified copy is admissible.
• Section 74(2): “Public records kept in any State of private documents.”
• Sections 76–77: Certified copies of public documents and their use to prove contents of public documents.

The Court then evaluated what RTI supplies:

• RTI Act definitions of “information”, “record”, and “right to information” (including taking “certified copies”).
• The Court accepted that RTI is “any other law in force in India” for Section 65(f) purposes—but emphasised that this helps only where the underlying document is properly classifiable as a public document/certified copy in the Evidence Act sense, not simply because the RTI officer stamps it as “true copy”.

4.2 Precedents Cited (and Their Influence)

(a) Deccan Paper Mills Company Limited vs. Regency Mahavir Properties and others - (2021) 4 SCC 786

The Court used this Supreme Court decision (as channelled through the Patna High Court’s discussion) to reinforce the conceptual separation between: (i) a private instrument, and (ii) the public record/entry relating to it. The quoted approval of Gopal Das v. Shri Thakurji - 1943 AIR (PC) 83 and the endorsement of the reasoning in Smt. Rekha Rana and others v. Smt. Ratnashree Jai - AIR 2006 Madhya Pradesh 107 supported the proposition that registration/official custody does not by itself “upgrade” a private document into a public document.

(b) Smt. Rekha Rana and others v. Smt. Ratnashree Jai - AIR 2006 Madhya Pradesh 107

This decision supplied a nuanced taxonomy that the High Court found consistent with the governing law:

• A registered deed (sale deed etc.) is not a public document; it remains a private document.
• The record in Book 1 maintained under the Registration Act (a public record of a private document) is a public document.
• A “certified copy” issued by the registering officer is a certified copy of that public record, but not a transformation of the private document’s character.

Though the present case did not concern a registered sale deed, the logic was extended: the place where a copy is stored and the mode of supply do not, by themselves, decide “public document” status.

(c) Abdul Rashid, S/o. Late Abdul Haque vs. Iftakhar Hussain @Dablu, S/o. MD Raja and others - 2025 LawSuit (Pat.) 267

The Gujarat High Court treated this as a useful synthesis because it collated: Smt. Rekha Rana, Deccan Paper Mills Company Limited, and Gopal Das, and also discussed the evidentiary effect of certified copies in the context of Section 74(2). The Gujarat High Court extracted and relied upon its reasoning to draw the governing line: public record of private document is public; private document itself is not.

(d) Gopal Das v. Shri Thakurji - 1943 AIR (PC) 83

This Privy Council authority was used for the foundational proposition that: a registered instrument/private receipt does not become “a public record of a private document” merely because it is presented to a public office; the original is returned to the party, while the official entry is the public document. The Gujarat High Court used this to reject the plaintiffs’ “RTI supply equals public document” syllogism.

(e) N.N. Global Private Limited Vs. Indo Unique Flame Ltd. - (2023) 7 SCC 1

The Constitution Bench passage quoted in Abdul Rashid was treated as reinforcing that certified copies may issue for public records of private documents and that the phrase in Section 74 is not confined to registration-records alone. However, the Gujarat High Court leveraged it to stress a different point: classification still depends on whether what is held is a “public record”, not on whether a public office has a photocopy in its files.

(f) Jagdishchandra Chandulal Shah v. State of Gujarat and others - 1989 Cri.LJ 1724

This Gujarat High Court decision was used as the local articulation of Section 74(2): private documents remain private; yet public records of them kept by the State are public documents, and certified copies of those public records can prove their contents. Crucially, the present judgment applied this to say that the SMC’s possession of copies does not automatically mean they are “public records” of private documents.

(g) Kumarpal N.Shah (Since deceased) Through L.Rs. Mrs.Tarunbala Kumarpal Shah and others vs. Universal Mechanical Works Private Limited - 2019 SCC OnLine Bom. 1627

This case was central to the RTI-specific evidentiary point:

• RTI typically supplies photostat copies certified as true copies.
• They “cannot be equated with certified copies mentioned in the Evidence Act”.
• If the original is private, its RTI copy does not become public; it must satisfy the Evidence Act rules for secondary evidence.

The Gujarat High Court expressly agreed with this view and applied it to the SMC-issued RTI copies.

(h) Waryam Singh v. Amarnath - AIR 1954 SC 215

This authority was invoked to justify supervisory correction under Article 227 where the trial court commits a gross error of law. Here, the error lay in exhibiting disputed private documents solely because they came via RTI, without addressing the Evidence Act thresholds.

(i) Other authorities appearing in the extracted discussions

• Appaiya Vs. Andimuthu @ Thangapandi & Ors., [Civil Appeal No. 14630 of 2015 {@ SLP (C) No. 10013 of 2015}] (quoted in Abdul Rashid) was treated as part of the broader debate on certified copies and public records, though the Gujarat High Court ultimately focused on the “private remains private” principle.
• Vithoba Savlaram v. Shrihari Narayan (AIR 1945 BOM 319) (quoted in Kumarpal N. Shah) reinforced that the entry in official record may be public, while the private document does not become public.
• References to Datti Kameswari, Gurmukh Ram Madan, and Ram Briksha Singh appeared within the quoted portions and were consistent with the same evidentiary distinction.

4.3 Legal Reasoning (How the Court Reached the Result)

The Court’s reasoning proceeds in a disciplined sequence:

1. Identify the nature of the disputed documents: completion certificates issued by a private architect and a family partition agreement are, by their nature, private documents (Section 75).
2. Test whether Section 74(2) applies: the question is not whether the SMC has them, but whether they are “public records kept in any State of private documents”. The Court held that mere filing/availability in SMC records does not itself prove the documents are “public records” in the Section 74(2) sense so as to make the copies automatically admissible as public documents.
3. Separate RTI access from evidentiary admissibility: RTI provides a statutory route to obtain information/copies, but it does not override the Evidence Act’s scheme on proof, classification, and admissibility.
4. Apply Section 65 correctly:
   • If a document is a public document (Section 74), then Section 65(e) + Sections 76–77 may allow proof by certified copy.
   • If a certified copy is permitted by other law (Section 65(f)), that still depends on the document being of a kind that legally permits such certified copy to substitute for the original.
   • For a private document, an RTI “true copy” is not enough; the party must lay foundation for secondary evidence under Section 65(a), (b), or (c).
5. Handle the disputed family partition agreement cautiously: given allegations that the magistrate’s seal/signature were not genuine and criminal proceedings exist, the Court avoided merits findings but underscored the necessity of formal proof and foundation before exhibition.
6. Supervisory correction and tailored relief: instead of remanding (which would delay a 2011 suit already expedited by the Supreme Court), the High Court decided the issue and ordered de-exhibition of only the three contested documents, leaving other exhibited documents untouched.

4.4 Impact (What This Changes/Clarifies for Future Cases)

• RTI is not an evidentiary shortcut: litigants cannot rely on RTI “true copies” of private instruments to bypass the Evidence Act’s proof requirements.
• Stricter scrutiny at the “exhibit” stage: trial courts must not exhibit contested private documents merely because they carry a public authority’s RTI endorsement; admissibility depends on Sections 74–77 and Section 65 conditions.
• Clear procedural roadmap: parties seeking to rely on RTI-sourced private documents should be prepared to:
  • summon originals (or proper custodians/authors), or
  • plead and prove Section 65(a)-(c) circumstances (loss, possession by opposite party with notice, etc.).
• Fraud/forgery sensitive documents: where genuineness is contested (e.g., family arrangements), this judgment discourages premature “exhibition” that may implicitly lend credibility.
• Article 227 oversight: the decision signals that misclassification of documents as “public” and consequent wrongful exhibition can constitute a correctable jurisdictional/legal error under supervisory review.

5. Complex Concepts Simplified

6. Conclusion

The Gujarat High Court’s decision draws a firm evidentiary boundary: RTI facilitates access, not admissibility. A private document does not become a public document merely because it is obtained from a public authority under RTI. Unless the document qualifies under Section 74(2) as a public record (and the copy meets Section 76 standards), RTI-procured copies of private documents cannot be exhibited under Section 65(e) or (f) without the foundational requirements for secondary evidence under Section 65(a), (b), or (c).

By directing de-exhibition of the three disputed documents (completion certificates and the family partition agreement) while allowing for future exhibition upon proper proof, the judgment balances evidentiary discipline with the need to avoid delaying a long-pending, expedited suit— and sets a clear precedent for trial courts and litigants on the proper treatment of RTI-sourced documents in civil trials.