9. Facts necessary to explain or introduce relevant facts

Reference: The Indian Evidence Act

Section 9

Facts necessary to explain or introduce a fact in issue or relevant fact, or which support or rebut an inference suggested by a fact in issue or relevant fact, or which establish the identity of any thing or person whose identity is relevant, or fix the time or place at which any fact issue or relevant fact happened, or which show the relation of parties by whom any such fact was transacted, are relevant in so far as they are necessary for that purpose.

This Section makes those facts which are needed to explain or introduce relevant facts or facts in issue relevant:
1. facts which establish the identity of any relevant person
2. facts which establish the identity of any relevant
3. facts which support an inference made by a fact in issue
4. facts which rebut an inference made by a fact in issue
5. facts which support an inference made by a relevant fact
6. facts which rebut an inference made by a relevant fact
7. facts which fix the time at which any fact in issue happened
8. facts which fix the place at which any fact in issue happened
9. facts which fix the time at which any relevant fact happened
10. facts which fix the place at which any relevant fact happened
11. facts which show the relation of parties who transacted any fact in issue or relevant fact

The identity of a person may be established by technical evidence such as a medical report. (Hardayal v. State of UP, 1976)
It is also under this Section that eyewitness identification – with all its faults – is relevant. In ‘Convicting the Innocent’, Prof. Brochard says that ‘the emotional balance of the victim or the eyewitness is so disturbed by his extraordinary experience that his powers of perception become distorted and his identification is frequently most untrustworthy. Into the identification enter other motives not necessarily originally stimulated by the accused personally: to exact vengeance upon the person believed guilty, to find a scapegoat, to support consciously or unconsciously an identification already made by another.
Identification is often open to suggestion and it doesn’t help that many people have difficulty recognizing people who belong to races they are not familiar with. It has been held in a number of cases that the later an identification parade is conducted, the more unreliable it becomes. However, in Ramanathan v. State of Tamil Nadu, 1978, Singhal, J explained the use of identification parades saying that it fills a gap in the investigation and is a workable way to test the memory and veracity of witnesses.
Nonetheless, it was held in Prem v. State of Maharashtra, 1993, it was held that if an identification parade is not conducted, it is not fatal and it does not ipso facto discredit the claim of the witnesses. Also, in George v. State of Kerela, 1998, it was held that the admissibility of identification in Court is not affected by the fact that a test of identification has not been conducted earlier.