Question:medium

Principle: A spouse is not permitted to put in evidence in any court, any communication during marriage between the spouses without the consent of the person who made the communication.
Facts: X, who is the wife of Y, saw her husband (Y) coming out of the neighbour's house at 6:00 am in the morning. Y told his wife X that he has murdered the neighbour and handed over the jewellery of that neighbour to his wife.

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Spousal communications during marriage are generally not admissible in court without the consent of the spouse who made them.
Updated On: Jul 15, 2026
  • X is allowed to appear as a witness in court to depose that her husband has told her that he committed a murder
  • X is not allowed to appear as a witness at all in any court
  • X is not allowed to appear as a witness to depose what was told by the husband to her, however, she can depose what she saw
  • X is an independent woman and she can do whatever she wants
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The Correct Option is C

Approach Solution - 1

Step 1: Understanding the Concept:
The rule given protects communications made between spouses during marriage. It stops one spouse from being forced to reveal, in court, what the other spouse privately told them, unless the spouse who spoke gives consent.

Step 2: Key Formula or Approach:
Split the evidence into two kinds: what Y told X in private, which is a protected communication, and what X saw with her own eyes, which is an independent observation and not a communication at all.

Step 3: Detailed Explanation:
Y's confession to X (that he had murdered the neighbour) is a private statement made between husband and wife during their marriage, so it stays protected, and X cannot be forced to repeat it in court without Y's consent.
X seeing Y come out of the neighbour's house at 6 am, however, is something she witnessed directly. It never passed as a communication from Y to her, so the protection does not apply to it.
This means X's evidence in court is limited: she can speak to what she saw, but not to what Y confided in her.

Step 4: Final Answer:
X is not allowed to appear as a witness to depose what was told by the husband to her, but she can depose what she saw.
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Approach Solution -2

Rules like this one exist to protect the trust between spouses, if anything said in confidence to a husband or wife could later be repeated in court against them, spouses would hesitate to speak freely with each other at all. Keeping that purpose in mind is a useful way to test each option, since any reading of the facts that undermines this purpose is probably the wrong one, and any reading that preserves it while still allowing independently known facts to come in is probably right.

  1. X is allowed to appear as a witness in court to depose that her husband has told her that he committed a murder: Letting X repeat Y's private confession defeats the very purpose of the rule, spouses would no longer be able to speak candidly to each other if every word could surface in court later. This option undermines the protection the rule is meant to give.
  2. X is not allowed to appear as a witness at all in any court: The rule's purpose is narrow, it protects confidences shared between spouses, not every fact a spouse happens to know. Shutting X out of the witness box altogether goes far beyond that purpose and would exclude her testimony about the neighbour's house even though that observation has nothing to do with marital confidence.
  3. X is not allowed to appear as a witness to depose what was told by the husband to her, however, she can depose what she saw: This keeps the confidence between Y and X protected, honouring the purpose of the rule, while letting X's own independent observation, which never touches on marital trust at all, be used freely. It serves the rule's purpose without over-reaching.
  4. X is an independent woman and she can do whatever she wants: This ignores the rule's purpose entirely and substitutes a general idea of personal freedom for a specific evidentiary protection aimed at preserving trust between spouses.

Only the third option protects the confidence between the spouses, which is the whole point of the rule, while still permitting X to testify about what she independently witnessed.

Therefore, the correct answer is X is not allowed to appear as a witness to depose what was told by the husband to her, however, she can depose what she saw.

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