Documents obtained unofficially from govt. department. Are they valid?

Any document filed by either parly passes through three stages before it is held proved or disproved. These are : First stage : when the documents arc Filed by eitherparty in the Court; these documents though on file, do not become part of the judicial record; Second stage: when the documents are tendered or produced m evidence by a party and the Court admits the documents in evidence. A .document admitted in evidence becomes a part of the judicial record of the case and constitutes evidence. Third stage: the documents which are held 'proved, not proved or disproved' when the Court is called upon to apply its judicial mind by reference to Section 3 of the Evidence Act. Usually this stage arrives the final hearing of the suit or proceeding.

The approach taken is that admit the document, if the evidence is inadmissible it shouldcome out during cross examination and its admissibility will be taken into account later. Further the Court is called upon to examine the admissibility of a document it concentrates only on the document. When called upon to form ajudicial opinion whether a document has been proved, disproved or not proved the Court would look not at the document alone or only at the statement of the witness standing in the box; it would take into consideration probabilities of the case as emerging from the whole record. It could not have been intendment of any law, rule or practice direction to expect the Court applying its judicial mind to the entire record of the case, each lime a document was placed before it for being exhibited and form an opinion if it was proved before marking it as an exhibit.