Question:medium

Principle: Oral evidence must always be direct i.e. of the person who says he saw the event and hearsay evidence is no evidence.
Facts: X was told by Y (whom X trusts) that Z has murdered A.

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In legal cases, only direct evidence from a witness who was present at the scene of the event is admissible. Hearsay evidence is generally excluded unless it falls under certain exceptions.
Updated On: Jul 15, 2026
  • Statement of X is admissible
  • Statement of X is not admissible because he has not seen Z murdering A
  • Statement of X is admissible because he trusts Y and Y never tells a lie
  • Statement of X is admissible because he is a renowned social activist and has a huge reputation to fight for the truth
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The Correct Option is B

Approach Solution - 1

Step 1: Understanding the Concept:
Oral evidence is only valid when it comes straight from someone who actually perceived the event. A person repeating what someone else told them is giving hearsay, and hearsay carries no evidentiary weight.

Step 2: Key Formula or Approach:
Trace where X's knowledge actually comes from. If it comes from his own eyes or ears at the scene, it is direct evidence. If it comes from another person's account, it is hearsay and gets excluded no matter how reliable that other person seems.

Step 3: Detailed Explanation:
X never saw Z murder A. He only knows about it because Y told him.
That makes X's knowledge secondhand, passed through Y rather than perceived directly by X.
How much X trusts Y, or how respected X is in society, does not change where the information originated. The source is still Y's account, not X's own observation.
So X's statement fails the direct-evidence test and is not admissible to prove that Z murdered A.

Step 4: Final Answer:
The statement of X is not admissible, because he has not seen Z murdering A.
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Approach Solution -2

The reason oral evidence is confined to direct perception is reliability, a court can test a witness's account by cross-examining the very person who claims to have seen the event, but it cannot cross-examine an absent third party whose words are merely being repeated by someone else. Using this reliability lens, each option can be checked by asking whose account is actually being tested in court if that option were accepted.

  1. Statement of X is admissible: Accepting this would mean the court is really testing Y's account at second hand through X, without Y ever being available for cross-examination on what he claims to have seen or known. That is precisely the unreliable chain the rule is designed to prevent.
  2. Statement of X is not admissible because he has not seen Z murdering A: This correctly recognises that X can only be cross-examined about what he personally perceived, and he perceived nothing about the murder itself, only Y's say-so. Excluding his account protects the reliability the rule is built around.
  3. Statement of X is admissible because he trusts Y and Y never tells a lie: X's trust in Y is not something a court can test through cross-examining X, it is simply X's opinion of Y, and it does nothing to make Y's original, untested claim reliable.
  4. Statement of X is admissible because he is a renowned social activist and has a huge reputation to fight for the truth: X's reputation for honesty says nothing about whether the underlying claim, that Z murdered A, is reliable, since X is not vouching for something he witnessed, only repeating what Y said.

Since the reliability the rule protects depends on the court being able to test the original observer directly, and X was never that observer, his account cannot be admitted.

Therefore, the correct answer is Statement of X is not admissible because he has not seen Z murdering A.

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