Summary: CCTV footage and call recordings are forms of electronic evidence that raise questions not only about admissibility but also about authenticity, reliability, preservation, and the manner in which the recording was made. The Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam, 2023 treats such electronic records within the statutory framework applicable to electronic evidence, including the certificate requirement under Section 63(4). For CCTV footage, the custodian of the recording system and the manner in which the footage was extracted and preserved become important, particularly where DVR or NVR systems automatically overwrite older recordings. For call recordings, courts also consider whether the recording was lawfully made and whether the person recording was a party to the conversation. The Supreme Court’s decision in R.M. Malkani v. State of Maharashtra remains important on relevance, identification of voices and protection against tampering, while Tomaso Bruno v. State of U.P. highlights the significance of available CCTV footage and the consequences of failing to produce relevant evidence. Businesses should therefore preserve original files and relevant surrounding footage, identify the system custodian, maintain an appropriate chain of custody, and obtain the requisite Section 63(4) certification. The practical challenge is not merely getting CCTV or call recordings admitted, but ensuring that the evidence can withstand a challenge concerning editing, selective extraction, loss of context, retention periods, or the legality of the recording itself.
The Legal Issue
Two separate questions arise whenever CCTV footage or a call recording is placed before a court or a tribunal. First, is the recording admissible at all, meaning does it satisfy the statutory conditions that apply to electronic records generally? Second, even if admissible, how much weight will the court give it, given that video and audio recordings are unusually easy to edit, splice, or take out of context?
A third issue, specific to call recordings, sits alongside these two: was the recording itself made lawfully, and does that matter for whether it can be used?
Applicable Legal Framework
The Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam, 2023 (BSA), which replaced the Indian Evidence Act, 1872, brings CCTV footage and call recordings within the definition of “document” and treats them as a form of documentary evidence. Sections 61 to 63 of the BSA carry forward the scheme that practitioners will recognise from the earlier Section 65B regime under the 1872 Act: an electronic record is treated as having the same legal effect as a paper document, provided the conditions in Section 63(4) are met and a certificate is furnished identifying the device that produced the output, confirming the device was functioning properly at the relevant time, and describing how the record was generated. This is the same Section 63 certificate discussed in detail in Section 63 Certificate: How Electronic Evidence Is Actually Proved in Indian Courts, and it applies without modification to a DVR export or a mobile phone’s call recording file.
For CCTV specifically, the certifying person is usually whoever has custody of the recording system, an IT administrator, a security agency representative, or in some cases the manufacturer’s technician. For a call recording made on a company phone, it is typically the person who owns or operates that phone or the recording application.
Consent and privacy raise a different question, governed less by the BSA and more by the right to privacy under Article 21 of the Constitution and by Section 5(2) of the Indian Telegraph Act, 1885, which restricts interception of communications by the state except on defined grounds. Where a private individual simply records a conversation they are themselves a party to, courts have historically treated this as different from unauthorised interception by a third party, though the distinction matters and gets tested in specific fact patterns, particularly in workplace and matrimonial disputes.
Judicial Position
The Supreme Court’s approach to tape-recorded conversations was set out in R.M. Malkani v. State of Maharashtra, (1973) 1 SCC 471, where the Court held that a recorded conversation is admissible provided the conversation is relevant to the matter in issue, the voice on the recording can be identified, and the accuracy of the recording is established by ruling out the possibility that it has been tampered with or edited. The Court in that case also held that a person voluntarily allowing their side of a conversation to be recorded does not, by that fact alone, amount to unlawful interception under the Telegraph Act. This three-part test (relevance, identification, and freedom from tampering) has remained the working standard that Indian courts apply to recorded conversations, and it sits alongside the chain of custody principles set out in Electronic Evidence Under Section 63: Admissibility and Reliability, which apply equally to a DVR export as to any other electronic record.
On CCTV footage, the Supreme Court’s judgment in Tomaso Bruno v. State of U.P., Criminal Appeal No. 142 of 2015, decided on 20 January 2015, is significant less for what it says about admissibility and more for what it says about the consequences of non-production. The Court held that where CCTV footage exists and would have been the best evidence available on a disputed fact, the prosecution’s failure to produce it justified drawing an adverse inference under the principle that withholding available evidence suggests it would not have supported the party withholding it. For businesses, the practical lesson is not simply that CCTV footage is admissible, but that failing to preserve and produce footage that exists can itself become a problem, whether the dispute is criminal, a workplace inquiry, or a commercial matter where the other side later asks why footage was not retained.
Practical Examples
Consider a retail chain investigating a cash-handling discrepancy at one outlet. The store’s CCTV system typically overwrites footage after fifteen days. If the discrepancy comes to light only after that window, the footage is gone regardless of how compliant the Section 63 process would have been. The practical answer is not a legal one, it is a retention policy: any business that may need to rely on CCTV footage in a dispute needs a written procedure for identifying and preserving relevant footage the moment an issue surfaces, well before litigation is contemplated.
Now consider a services company where a client disputes what was agreed on a call with the company’s account manager. The company recorded the call on its CRM platform, with a standard disclosure at the start of the call. Here, the recording is more straightforward to use than the CCTV example, since a clear consent disclosure addresses the privacy concern directly, the file sits on a system with an identifiable custodian who can certify it under Section 63(4), and the recording captures a single relevant conversation rather than continuous, largely irrelevant footage that needs to be excerpted.
A harder case arises in workplace investigations, where an employee secretly records a conversation with a colleague or manager, believing it documents harassment or misconduct, and later wants to rely on it in an internal inquiry or before a court. Such recordings are frequently held admissible under the Malkani test, since a party to a conversation recording their own conversation does not raise the same interception concerns as third-party surveillance, but their reliability is scrutinised closely for editing, selective recording, and context, and organisations conducting the inquiry need to test the recording rather than accept it uncritically.
Common Mistakes
This is a common mistake made by businesses and litigants in several recurring ways. “Because CCTV footage exists, they take it as gospel without getting a Section 63(4) certificate from the person who has custody of the system. They allow footage to be overwritten by default retention settings before anyone has evaluated whether a dispute could occur. They export small clips and not the footage around the clip . This then invites the challenge that the clip has been taken out of context . And with call recordings they assume that any recording is automatically usable, without considering whether the manner of recording (especially covert interception by someone who is not a party to the call) raises a separate legal problem which is distinct from the BSA’s admissibility conditions.
Practical Steps
A business or litigant relying on CCTV footage or a call recording should preserve the original file, and the device or system that generated it, without alteration, as soon as a potential dispute is identified. The custodian of the recording system, whoever operates or has administrative access to the DVR, NVR, or recording software, should be identified early, since that person will typically need to sign the Section 63(4) certificate, the same custodian question addressed for other record types in Proving WhatsApp, Email & Foreign Cloud Records in Indian Courts. Where footage spans a longer period than what is directly relevant, it is generally safer to preserve a wider window around the relevant event rather than an isolated clip, to avoid a later argument that context was stripped out. For call recordings, any consent disclosure used at the time of recording should be documented and retained alongside the recording itself. Finally, where CCTV footage exists and might be relevant to a known or reasonably anticipated dispute, a written note recording when the footage was identified and preserved helps counter any later suggestion that footage was selectively retained or withheld.
Conclusion
CCTV footage and call recordings are covered by the same Section 63 framework as other electronic evidence under the BSA, but they have two extra pressure points that text-based records usually don’t: a retention window that expires on its own, and for recordings of conversations, a question about how the recording was made in the first place. No issue is settled after the fact. Both rely on decisions made or not made before anyone knew a dispute was coming.
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Disclaimer: This article is intended for general legal awareness and does not constitute legal advice. Readers dealing with a specific dispute involving CCTV footage or call recordings should consult a qualified legal professional and, where relevant, a forensic expert, before relying on such evidence in any proceeding.
