An email arrives exactly as expected — right sender address, right subject line, right timing in a chain of correspondence. Can a court simply presume it says what the sender's own computer actually transmitted? Section 90 of the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam, 2023 (BSA) says yes, with one sharp limit built directly into its own second half: the court may presume the message's content survived the trip intact, but it may never presume who actually pressed send.
90. Presumption as to electronic messages.
The Court may presume that an electronic message, forwarded by the originator through an electronic mail server to the addressee to whom the message purports to be addressed corresponds with the message as fed into his computer for transmission; but the Court shall not make any presumption as to the person by whom such message was sent.
Section 90 corresponds to Section 88A of the Indian Evidence Act, 1872 — like Section 93 of this Act, a provision that did not exist in the original 1872 text and was inserted by the Information Technology Act, 2000. The BSA carries it forward without change, confirmed against two independent bare-act sources.
Two Presumptions Bolted Together, Pulling in Opposite Directions
Read carefully, Section 90 is really two rules in one sentence. The first half is permissive: a court may presume that what the addressee's mail server received corresponds to what the sender's computer actually transmitted — in other words, that the message was not corrupted, truncated, or altered somewhere in transit between origin and inbox. The second half is a flat prohibition sitting right next to that permission: no presumption whatsoever may be made about which person actually sent the message, even where the message purports to come from a named, identifiable sender.
| Question | Section 90's Answer |
|---|---|
| Did the message received match what was actually transmitted? | May be presumed, in the court's discretion |
| Was it this specific person who sent it? | Must never be presumed — always requires independent proof |
Why the Line Falls Exactly There
The distinction tracks a real technical difference in how email actually works. Transmission integrity between a mail server and an inbox is a largely mechanical, verifiable process — protocols are designed to preserve message content faithfully, and corruption in transit is comparatively rare and often independently detectable. Attribution — proving which human being actually composed and sent a given message — is an entirely different problem. Email accounts get compromised, shared, spoofed, or accessed by someone other than the named holder with disturbing regularity, and the "From" field of an email is, at a purely technical level, nothing more than a claim the sending software makes, not a verified fact.
Section 90 refuses to let a court shortcut past that gap. Even where every surface indicator points to a particular sender — the right email address, the right writing style, a plausible context — the section forbids treating any of that as sufficient on its own. Attribution has to be independently established, through evidence such as server logs tying the message to a specific account and device, admissions, corroborating conduct, or forensic analysis — not assumed from the message's face merely because Section 90's first half already vouches for the content.
How This Sits Against Section 93's More Generous Presumption
It is worth reading Section 90 directly against Section 93 of this Act — the electronic-records presumption covered earlier in this project's coverage of this chapter's final stretch. Section 93 does allow a court to presume who affixed an electronic signature, once the record is five years old and produced from proper custody. Section 90 permits no equivalent presumption for an ordinary email's sender, at any age, from any custody. The difference is not an oversight — an electronic signature is a purpose-built authentication mechanism, cryptographically or procedurally tied to a specific signatory by the systems that create it, while an email's "From" line carries no comparable built-in guarantee. The Act calibrates its presumptions to how reliable the underlying technology actually is, rather than applying one uniform rule to everything labelled "electronic."
A Practical Illustration
An employer relies on an email, apparently from an employee's official account, resigning with immediate effect. If produced with server logs and a proper certificate, Section 90 lets the employer's case rest on the presumption that the resignation text received matches what was actually typed and sent from that account. But if the employee later claims the account was accessed by someone else, or that the email was fabricated after the fact, the employer cannot point to Section 90 to presume the employee personally sent it — that fact has to be proved through independent evidence, such as login records tied to the employee's own device, or conduct consistent with having resigned.
Key Takeaways
- Section 90 BSA carries forward Section 88A IEA — inserted by the Information Technology Act, 2000, not part of the original 1872 Act — unchanged, confirmed against two independent sources.
- It permits a discretionary presumption that an email's content was faithfully transmitted, but expressly forbids any presumption about who sent it.
- The distinction reflects real technical differences: transmission integrity is largely mechanical and verifiable; sender identity is not, given how easily accounts can be compromised or spoofed.
- It contrasts directly with Section 93 BSA's more generous signature-attribution presumption for aged electronic records — the Act calibrates trust to the reliability of the underlying authentication technology.
- Sender attribution in an email dispute must always be independently proved — through logs, admissions, or corroborating conduct — never assumed from the message's face.
Conclusion
Section 90 draws a precise, technically grounded line: it will meet ordinary email evidence halfway on the question of whether a message arrived intact, but it refuses to extend that same trust to who sent it. With this article, this project's run through Chapter VI in full and this stretch of Chapter V — Sections 103 down to 90 — is now complete. The remainder of Chapter V, Sections 56 through 89, remains for a future run.