Kishan Lal v Rajasthan1: "18 Now we proceed to examine the principle of evaluation of any dying declaration There is a distinction between the evaluation of a dying declaration under the English law and that under the Indian law Under the English law, credence and the relevancy of a dying declaration is only when a person making such a statement is in a hopeless condition and expecting an imminent death So under the English law, for its admissibility, the declarant should have been in actual danger of death at the time when they are made, and that he should have had a full apprehension of this danger and the death should have ensued Under the Indian law the dying declaration is relevant whether the person who makes it was or was not under expectation of death at the time of declaration Dying declaration is admissible not only in the case of homicide but also in civil suits Under the English law, the admissibility rests on the principle that a sense of impending death produces in a man's mind the same feeling as that of a conscientious and virtuous man under oath The general principle on which this species of evidence are admitted is that they are declarations made in extremity, when the party is at the point of death, and when every hope of this world is gone, when every motive to falsehood is silenced and the mind is induced by the most 1 5

AIR 1999 SC 3062

All India Reporter, Supreme Court

Supreme Court of India

India

Cases Referring to this Case