- INTRODUCTION
Witnesses are most significant and play a crucial role in both the procedures of civil and criminal cases, witnesses and documents are the main source of the evidence. The judicial action is depending on the evidence and the evidence is a statement of witnesses. Witness is someone who gives testimony or evidence on a ground in any court; an individual indifferent to each party, committed to telling the truth, the whole truth and only the truth is a trial; one who perceives something by direct experience one who authenticates a document.
Witnesses have a fundamental impact on the prosecution of offenders before any criminal justice system, since the productive culmination of each stage of a criminal procedure and from the initial complaint of the crime, to the preliminary one, usually has the participation of witnesses. His work in the preliminary phase its case using main evidence, often such as an oral examination of witnesses, who would then have the option of being examined by the defence in a public meeting.
The term witness has not been defined in the BSA or in BNSS. Generally speaking, witness is an individual who is available at the occasion and ready to give information about it. A witness is someone who has direct information about an irregularity or a dramatic event through their senses. For example, seeing, hearing, smelling, and touching can help certify important considerations for the crime or event.
According to Blank’s Law Dictionary, a witness is someone who sees, knows or attests to something or someone who gives testimony, under oath or affirmation in person or by oral or written statement by affidavit. The Oxford Dictionary describes the witness as a person who sees an event, usually a crime or an accident.
The term witness in its severe legitimate sense implies someone who gives evidence of a situation under the watchful eye of a court and in its general sense includes all the people from whose lips the testimony is extracted to be used in any judicial procedure and, therefore, it includes filters and filters, as well as people who give oral testimony before a court or jury.
All persons are competent to testify unless the court determines that they cannot understand the questions posed or give rational answers due to some deficiency. Young age and old age are, of course, factors that the law considers capable of affecting a person’s testimonial capacity. But the mere fact that a witness is young or old is not enough to conclude that he does not have testimonial competence.