Admissibility of Blockchain Evidence in India: The Certification Conundrum
Introduction
The increasing commercial use of digital transactions and virtual platforms has necessitated a shift in how courts view and handle evidence. Among these new technologies, blockchain stands out as one of the most disruptive. With its promises of decentralisation, immutability, and cryptographic security, blockchain technology offers an unprecedented level of reliability in documenting and verifying digital transactions. However, the integration of such technologies into modern legal systems, especially in the context of evidentiary standards, is fraught with complexities. The Indian legal framework, primarily through Section 63(4) of the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam, 2023 (“BSA”), which succeeds the Indian Evidence Act’s Section 65B(4), imposes specific certification requirements for electronic evidence that are structurally incompatible with blockchain’s decentralised nature.
This piece seeks to examine the core legal problem arising from this incompatibility: how can Indian courts admit blockchain evidence when the technology lacks a centralised operator who can certify it under the existing legal provisions? It aims to interrogate how they can potentially be authenticated under existing or modified evidentiary rules, and proposes a new framework for certification.
Why are Blockchain Records Valuable as Evidence
Blockchain is a decentralised, cryptographically secured digital ledger that records transactions in an immutable and chronological manner. Blockchain is decentralised, which means it is not controlled by a single authority but rather maintained across a network of computers. It is cryptographically secured, meaning it uses complex mathematical algorithms to protect data and ensure that only authorised parties can access or modify it. The main concerns concerning the admissibility of electronic evidence revolve around its integrity and the possibility of it being tampered with. However, blockchain technology can directly address these problems. Since blockchain records are intrinsically decentralised and cryptographic security protocols linked to them assure that data remains immutable following its entry, they address the problem of data integrity. The inherent immutability of blockchain ensures that its records are mostly tamper-proof.
Another feature that is unique to blockchain is its consensus mechanism. Such a mechanism guarantees that the data in the blockchain is verified by a network of independent nodes before it gets added to the blockchain. Such a consensus mechanism makes the blockchain records “self-authenticating”, therefore doing away with the need for any traditional form of external verification like certification. Therefore, blockchain evidence is able to shift the focus from external forms of verification to the inherent reliability of the evidentiary record itself.
Another important feature that helps in enhancing its evidentiary value is its ability to provide timestamped records, meaning that every entry recorded in the blockchain will be linked to a point in time. Such a process of timestamping becomes useful when one seeks to establish the order of events that concern the timeline of occurrence of a dispute. For example, the records could serve as proof of the time of a transaction in a dispute.
These features make blockchain a useful tool in legal proceedings, especially when they involve digital transactions. For example, in criminal trials, blockchain-based records can be used to trace illicit activities such as drug trafficking or money laundering which are mostly facilitated nowadays through cryptocurrency transactions. In, United States v. Ulbricht, the founder of Silk Road was convicted on multiple counts, in part due to blockchain-based financial records showing transfers of Bitcoin used for illegal purchases. In intellectual property disputes, blockchain can be used to establish prior authorship, as platforms nowadays increasingly use blockchain to timestamp and register digital content.
However, it is important to note that the evidentiary value of blockchain records can vary depending on how the blockchain is structured. Not all blockchains offer the same level of decentralisation or transparency. For instance, public blockchains like Bitcoin are open and distributed across a wide network, while private blockchains may be controlled by a single entity or small group. These differences can have significant implications for their reliability as legal evidence, which would be examined in greater detail later in this piece.
Certification Issues under Section 63(4) of the BSA 2023
Can Blockchain Evidence be certified under Section 63(4) of the BSA?
The admissibility of blockchain evidence in Indian courts is obstructed by a stringent procedural requirement, which is the certificate mandated under Section 63(4) of the BSA. As per Indian law, all electronic evidence will be considered to be unreliable hearsay and hence inadmissible unless it abides by the conditions put forth under Section 63 of the BSA. It is mandated under Section 63(4) that a certificate must be produced along with the electronic evidence, which attests to three things. Firstly, it must identify the specific electronic record and explain how it was created. Secondly, it should provide relevant details about the device used to produce the record, demonstrating that it was generated by a computer. Finally, the certificate must address any other points related to the conditions outlined in sub-section (2).
The certificate must be signed by “a person in charge of the computer or communication device or the management of the relevant activities (whichever is appropriate) and an expert. The exact designation of the “person in charge” would vary from case to case. For example, in Kundan Singh v State, involving the authentication of call data records as evidence, the network provider company’s nodal officer was considered to be the responsible “person in charge” to sign the certificate.
However, the requirement of there being a “person in charge” to sign the certificate makes the certification process of blockchain evidence problematic. Traditional electronic evidence, like server logs or emails, usually has an identifiable custodian or controller (e.g. a network administrator or service provider) who can issue the required certificate. In contrast, a public blockchain, like Bitcoin or Ethereum, is inherently decentralised, maintained by numerous independent nodes with no central authority or single entity “in charge”. Consequently, identifying a “person in charge of the computer or the management of relevant activities” for a truly decentralised blockchain is virtually impossible. In effect, the very decentralisation that makes blockchain such a secure and valuable source of evidence makes it difficult to actually admit it as evidence.
Under the prior Section 65B regime, the issue of certification had already sparked considerable legal debate. In Shahfi Mohammad v. State of Himachal Pradesh, the Supreme Court had observed that Section 65B was merely procedural and not mandatory, and suggested that electronic evidence might be admitted even without a certificate. Scholarship on the admissibility of blockchain evidence in India suggests that this ruling reflects a shift towards a legal framework that is more open to admitting blockchain evidence, even without any certificate. Although Shahfi Mohammad was later overruled by Arjun Panditrao Khotkar v Kailash Gorantyal, which reaffirmed the mandatory nature of the certificate, the question that it highlighted remains relevant. The decision in Arjun Panditrao did acknowledge an “impossibility exception” to the certification requirement; if the party genuinely cannot obtain the Section 65B certificate despite best efforts, the requirement may be relaxed on the principle that the law does not demand the impossible. Blockchain evidence might arguably fall into this zone of impossibility. Since there is, by design, no person in charge to provide the certificate, insisting on one would end up excluding evidence that is highly reliable on mere technical grounds.
In this context, if a party tries to admit blockchain evidence, the likely outcome would either be that the blockchain evidence gets disqualified due to the lack of a traditional certificate, or the courts would bypass the plain letter of Section 63(4) by invoking the impossibility exception on a case-by-case basis. This exception is, however, quite limited in scope and is fraught with uncertainty as it is heavily dependent on judicial discretion. Given the rigidity of the current certification requirements and the unique technical characteristics of blockchain, legislative reforms seem to be desirable. Comparative jurisprudence can help us look at how other forward-thinking jurisdictions have been able to accommodate blockchain evidence into their legal frameworks.
Comparative Jurisprudence on the Authentication of Blockchain Evidence
Jurisdictions that have been grappling with blockchain evidence have started to modernise their evidence laws, offering insight into how India can possibly resolve these issues.The US state of Vermont and China stand out as the only jurisdictions to have explicitly incorporated blockchain evidence into their legal or judicial frameworks. Other U.S. states such as Arizona, Nevada, and Delaware have passed legislation acknowledging the legal validity of blockchain technology in areas such as electronic contracts, corporate governance, and record-keeping. As such, Vermont and China remain the best examples for examining how courts can accommodate blockchain records within formal evidentiary frameworks.
Under Vermont law, a digital record stored in a blockchain would be considered to be self-authenticating if it is accompanied by a written declaration from a “qualified person” made under oath. This provision, unlike the BSA, does not require the declarant/certifier to be a person who is responsible for managing or operating the blockchain, presumably due to the difficulty of locating such a person within the blockchain’s decentralised framework. Instead, Vermont allows an appropriate expert to certify the authenticity of the blockchain record, thereby fulfilling the evidentiary requirement without undermining the decentralised nature of the technology
China’s approach to blockchain is another interesting framework to consider. The landmark case of Hangzhou Huatai Yimei Culture Media Co. Ltd. v. Shenzhen Daotong Technology Development Co. Ltd., decided by the Hangzhou Internet Court in 2018, marked the first judicial recognition of blockchain evidence in China. In this case, blockchain records were put forth as evidence of IP infringement, and the court admitted the evidence after verifying the hash values and timestamps. The court reiterated that while examining the admissibility of blockchain, attention must be given to the source of the data, whether the sources that were used for its collection and storage were reliable. The court, hence, did not rely on formalistic certification requirements to admit the evidence but rather focused on the technological integrity of the evidence.
China’s commitment to integrating blockchain into its judicial process was further reinforced when the Supreme People’s Court issued the Provisions on the Trial of Cases by Internet Courts in September 2018. Article 11 of the provision states that data that is collected through blockchain is admissible, provided that it is reliable, tamper-proof, and its authenticity can be proved.
An Indian Model of Blockchain Certification
The qualified person requirement of Vermont law and the technical integrity-based approach of China both serve as examples of how Indian law can certify and admit blockchain-based evidence records. However, what both these jurisdictions erroneously do is that they fail to distinguish between public and private blockchains and apply the same evidentiary standards to both.
Public blockchains, such as Bitcoin and Ethereum, are open and decentralised networks in which any participant can join, access the ledger and validate transactions. Their transparency and their reliance on a distributed consensus mechanism make tampering with them extremely difficult and, therefore, offer a high level of reliability.
In contrast, private blockchains are networks that cannot be joined without permission and are typically controlled by a single entity. These networks restrict participation and grant control over the consensus mechanisms to only a select few, thus increasing the risk of centralisation and tampering. An administrator of a private blockchain can fabricate tampered records, then present them as immutable. Therefore, while the structure of a public blockchain gives it presumed authenticity, private blockchains would demand a higher evidentiary standard.
In the Indian context, despite the self-authenticating nature of blockchain, completely abandoning the certification requirement is not a viable solution either. As Ashwini Vaidialingam argues, the certificate provides the court with the minimum necessary information with respect to the electronic record, including the process of generating the output and whether the system that produced it had any technical issues. In cases involving new and complex technologies such as blockchain, Indian courts may lack the technical know-how to fully understand the mechanism of the system without assistance. Therefore, the certificate can act as an entry point for an inquiry into the authenticity of the record by providing the court with the requisite information.
Therefore, the solution to India’s blockchain conundrum does not lie in rejecting certification altogether but rather in defining who can certify and when. To this end, I propose a new model of certification that differentiates between public and private blockchains and their evidentiary requirements while still aligning with the evidentiary objectives set out in S 63(4). Under this model, public blockchains such as Bitcoin and Ethereum should be considered to be self-authenticating when it is accompanied by a certificate from a qualified blockchain expert. This certificate should detail the mechanisms of blockchain, such as its hash value, consensus protocol, and timestamp, and confirm that the record has not been tampered with. These requirements would satisfy the evidentiary objectives of Section 63(4), as as they provide the court with sufficient information regarding the origin, integrity, and technical reliability of the electronic record, thereby fulfilling the section’s aim of ensuring that electronic evidence is both verifiable and trustworthy. Since no “person in charge” exists for public blockchains, the role of the expert becomes important. Courts should, however, retain the discretion to demand further authentication in the form of additional supporting evidence if the opposing party raises credible doubts about the reliability of the blockchain records.
On the other hand, for private blockchains, the dual certification requirement under Section 63(4) should be retained. Private blockchains are run by a single entity and have a designated authority that maintains the infrastructure of the blockchain. Therefore, there would be a “person in charge” of the private blockchain who can sign the section 63(4) certificate. This dual certification would ensure that records from private blockchains, which are more susceptible to tampering, undergo a higher scrutiny before it is admitted as evidence.
Such a nuanced approach that differentiates between public and private blockchains, instead of applying a uniform evidentiary standard, would ensure that courts neither exclude a reliable source of evidence on mere technical grounds nor admit data that can potentially be manipulated, without enough evidentiary scrutiny. This approach also helps prevent a chilling effect on the use of blockchain evidence, where parties might otherwise be discouraged from relying on inherently reliable records due to rigid procedural requirements. The BSA should therefore ideally be amended to incorporate differentiated certification standards that reflect the decentralised nature of blockchain technology.
Conclusion
The integration of blockchain into the Indian evidentiary framework raises deeper questions about how legal systems adapt to decentralised technologies. While a differentiated model of certification offers a workable interim solution, it also signals the need for broader legal reforms that move beyond retrofitting new technologies into old categories. As blockchain and other decentralised technologies evolve, courts will increasingly be asked to adjudicate disputes where traditional evidentiary tools fall short. Looking ahead, future inquiries must expand beyond this question of certification to also engage with the emerging challenges posed by decentralised technologies. This includes questions about jurisdiction, enforceability, and the interpretation of blockchain records. Although these issues are outside the immediate scope of this paper, they are important questions for the developing relationship between law and decentralized systems. There is also a requirement for jurisprudential rethinking of what constitutes reliability and authenticity in the digital age.
[* The Author is a fourth-year B.A. LLB. (Hons.) student at the National Law School of India University, Bangalore.]