Sajjad Husain LawSajjad Husain Law Associates

Introduction

A bank manager receives a court summons ordering him to bring a customer's loan file to a hearing in a dispute he has nothing to do with. He shows up, hands over the documents — and opposing counsel immediately tries to cross-examine him about what the loan agreement means, whether the customer defaulted, and other matters he has no personal knowledge of. Can they? The answer is a firm no, and the rule that stops it is one of the shortest but most practically important provisions in this entire chapter.

Section 144 of the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam, 2023 (BSA), in Chapter X ("Of the Examination of Witnesses"), draws a sharp line between two roles that are easy to confuse: a person compelled to produce a document, and a person called to testify as a witness. This article explains why that distinction matters, how it protects everyone from records custodians to investigating officers, and a recent High Court ruling that shows the rule in action.

Two Roles the Law Keeps Deliberately Separate

Section 144 recognises that being ordered to bring a document to court and being called to give evidence about a case are two entirely different functions. A court, or a party with the court's authority, can compel a person to produce a document through a summons — under the BSA framework, this compulsory-production power lives in Section 94 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023 (BNSS), the direct successor to the old Section 91 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973. But complying with that summons — physically handing over a file, a ledger, or a digital record — is a purely custodial act. It says nothing about whether the person complying has any personal knowledge of the facts in dispute, or is willing and able to answer questions about them under oath.

Section 144 makes sure the law does not collapse these two roles into one. The mere act of production is not, by itself, an invitation to be examined and cross-examined as though the person had taken the witness stand to testify about the substance of the case.

Why This Rule Exists: Protecting Third Parties From an Unwanted Role

Without Section 144, every custodian who complies with a routine production summons — a bank official, a hospital records officer, a company secretary, a government archivist — could be dragged into open-ended cross-examination on matters entirely outside their personal knowledge, simply because they were the one who physically carried the document into the courtroom. That would make compliance with a lawful summons a genuine liability, discouraging the cooperation the summons power depends on in the first place.

Section 144 removes that risk. A person who produces a document under summons can be asked only very narrow, formal questions connected to establishing the document's identity or authenticity as a piece of evidence — they cannot be cross-examined on its contents, its implications, or the underlying facts of the case unless a party takes the additional, deliberate step of calling them as a witness.

The Rule Protects Investigators Too: The Punjab & Haryana High Court's Ruling

Section 144's protection is not limited to third-party document custodians. In a corruption case before the Punjab and Haryana High Court, the accused sought to cross-examine an Investigating Officer about the contents of documents the officer had collected during the investigation. The Court, invoking Section 139 of the old Indian Evidence Act (the BSA's Section 144), refused permission — holding that a person who merely collected and produced documents in the course of the proceedings cannot be cross-examined about their contents on that basis alone.

The ruling underscores an important point: the officer had certainly interacted extensively with the documents, but interaction alone — even substantial, investigative interaction — does not automatically convert a document-handler into a witness subject to cross-examination about substance. The contents of exhibited documents are for the trial court to evaluate at final adjudication, not to be tested through cross-examining every person who happened to have custody of the paper along the way.

Worked Examples

Example 1 — The Bank Manager Scenario

A bank manager is summoned under Section 94 BNSS to produce a customer's loan file in a dispute between the customer and a third party. He appears, hands over the file, and confirms it is the bank's genuine record. Opposing counsel cannot cross-examine him about whether the customer actually defaulted or what the loan terms mean in practice — those are matters for a witness with personal knowledge, and the manager has not been called as one merely by producing the file.

Example 2 — When the Same Person Becomes a Witness

If a party later formally calls that same bank manager as a witness — to testify, for instance, to the bank's regular record-keeping practices under the business-records provisions elsewhere in the BSA — he is now examined-in-chief and can be fully cross-examined, just like any other witness. The trigger is the formal act of being called, not the earlier act of producing the document.

Section 144 BSA vs. Section 139 IEA: No Substantive Change

Section 144 corresponds to Section 139 of the Indian Evidence Act, 1872 (IEA), carried forward without any change in wording. The production-summons power it operates alongside has moved from Section 91 CrPC to Section 94 BNSS, with modernised language covering digital and electronic records held by intermediaries — but the core rule protecting the person who complies with that summons from unwarranted cross-examination is exactly as it stood in 1872.

Section 144 Alongside Section 147: Two Sides of the Same Documentary Question

Section 144 pairs naturally with Section 147 BSA (already covered in this series), though the two address different stages of the same problem. Section 147 governs what happens once a document's contents are being described in testimony — allowing the adverse party to object until the document itself is produced. Section 144 governs the prior, threshold question of who is even eligible to be cross-examined about a document at all. A person can satisfy Section 147 by simply producing the requested document, and still remain entirely outside Section 144's reach unless formally called as a witness.

Who Section 144 Actually Affects

1. Third-party document custodians — bank officials, records officers, company representatives — are protected from being cross-examined about a document's substance merely because they complied with a production summons.
2. Investigating officers who collect documentary evidence retain the same protection, as confirmed by the Punjab and Haryana High Court, unless formally called as witnesses.
3. Litigators seeking to test a document's substance must take the deliberate additional step of calling the relevant person as a witness — production alone will not open the door.
4. Trial judges must distinguish formal witness examination from the narrower, largely administrative questioning permissible of a mere document-producer.
5. Anyone served with a production summons under Section 94 BNSS can comply without fear that doing so automatically exposes them to a full cross-examination on the case's merits.

Key Takeaways

1. Producing a document is not the same as testifying: compliance with a summons to produce is a custodial act, not an invitation to full witness examination.
2. Cross-examination requires a separate, formal step: a party must actually call the person as a witness before cross-examination becomes available.
3. The rule protects investigators as well as third parties: the Punjab and Haryana High Court confirmed an Investigating Officer who merely collected documents could not be cross-examined about their contents on that basis alone.
4. The rule is unchanged from 1872: Section 144 BSA carries forward Section 139 IEA verbatim, operating alongside the modernised production-summons power in Section 94 BNSS.
5. Section 144 addresses a threshold question distinct from Section 147: who may be cross-examined about a document at all, as opposed to how a document's contents may be discussed in testimony.

Conclusion

Section 144 protects a basic but easily overlooked distinction: the law can compel a person to bring a document into court without thereby compelling them to answer for everything the document might mean. That separation matters because the machinery of document production depends on people being willing to comply with lawful summonses — a willingness that would erode quickly if compliance came bundled with an unpredictable, open-ended cross-examination.

Read alongside Section 94 BNSS's modernised production power and Section 147 BSA's rules on documentary testimony, Section 144 completes a coherent structure: documents can be compelled into evidence without automatically compelling the people who hold them into the witness box.