Good evening friends, and it gives us immense pleasure to connect with Justice Vedrakash Sharma, a former judge from Madhya Balesh High Court, and who is also the chairman of the MP law commission. And those who have been connected with beyond law CLC would have seen that he had shared his earlier knowledge on the evidence itself, which is already being well received. And therefore, in continuity with that, we had requested Justice Sharma to share his knowledge on the aspects of how to appreciate the evidence, and how do you master it. And that's why it has been captioned as mastering the art of appreciating evidence. And we thought that there could be no better person who can explain these nuances to us. And we have been receiving requests in this regard. And despite the fact that we are in the last week of the this year, and everybody is busy with the Christmas, as well as the new year. Yet Justice Sharma, as usual, his passion for teaching knowledge and sharing with the everyone. Acceded to our request, and amongst us, he's there, and we will request him to share his knowledge. Over to you sir. Thank you, Prigalshi. A very good evening to all the participants who are virtually connected in this webinar. The topic, mastering the art of appreciation of evidence, equals to the of perennial importance. In the sense that ultimately, when after a long run trial, both the parties have reduced their evidence before the court. To decide which evidence has to be accepted. Which evidence has to be rejected. And ultimately, what should be the fate of the case. Now, indeed, it is a journey for search of truth by following the principles of fair trial. And this fair trial approach must also reflect in the decision itself. Meaning, thereby, that the judgment or the order, based on a particular set of evidence, must reflect that the judge has applied its mind to all the facets of the evidence. And has examined the evidence in a manner so as to arrive at the truth. Now, basically, the appreciation is a very natural process. Whenever something happens before us, we just start appreciating whether it is right, whether it is wrong, whether it can be accepted, whether it cannot be accepted. But when this very process has to be applied in the process of dispensation of justice, certain well-settled principles with regard to appreciation of evidence has to be kept in mind. So, the topic with regard to marshalling the art of appreciation of evidence, requires that we should know that ultimately what is appreciation of evidence, who is required to appreciate the evidence, what may be the significant role of the lawyers in this process of appreciation of evidence, what are the fundamental principles with regard to the appreciation of evidence, what are certain conventional principles or ideas which can sometimes hamper the process of true and just appreciation of evidence. And then, we are also supposed to examine some specific cases with regard to appreciation of evidence. Now, the first thing is, very simply, of course, this expression has not been defined in the evidence set or in the code of civil or criminal procedure. Still, this is something very well discussed and deliberated concept in the judicial circles. So, appreciation in the process of justice dispensation means finding out the worth, the value, the quality and the trustworthiness of a particular piece of evidence with regard to a disputed question of fact. So, in that process, the judge has to carefully examine the evidence with regard to the points which are in dispute before the play. Now, basically it is the evidence which has to be appreciated, but then a judge or a lawyer must be very careful that what we are appreciating or what shall ultimately form the basis of judgment or order that should be firstly relevant material, relevant under section 5 to 55 of the Evidence Act. And apart that, it should also be admissible evidence. Sometimes, the evidence may be relevant, but may not be admissible. As we see in the case of privileged communication, communication between the lawyer and his client, communication between husband and wife. So, the piece of evidence which has to be evaluated or examined to find out its worth, value, quality and trustworthiness should be relevant as well as admissible. Therefore, the irrelevant material or though relevant but inadmissible material has to be carefully kept out. Now, this appreciation has to be done not in a directionless manner. It has to be carried out with regard to disputed points of facts which are necessary to be determined to decide the right liability or disability asserted by one party and denied by the other party. So, the judge or for that matter, the lawyers who as officers of the court are assisting the court with regard to this process of appreciation, they must have a clear cut picture in a chronological manner with regard to various disputed points involved in a particular case. Now, this can not be a half hazard process. Ultimately, these questions on which the evidence has to be appreciated must be put in a systematic and logical order. And unless these points are there in the mind of the judge or the lawyer, it may not be possible to properly appreciate the evidence in a particular case. Now, the second thing is that apart from having a clear cut idea about the disputed points of fact, maybe principal facts or maybe collateral facts. The other thing which should be preceded before marshalling, before appreciating the evidence is the marshalling of evidence. Because if marshalling of evidence, again a term which has not been defined in the evidence act or in the procedural laws, if marshalling of the evidence is not carried out in a perfect and purposeful manner, then definitely it may not be possible to appreciate the evidence in its true sense. We can just understand it by way of a very simple example. There is a case pertaining to rape. And the dispute is with regard to the ace of the victim, that if the prosecution version is that the victim was not of consenting is. On the contrary, the plea raised by the defense is that the victim has attained the consenting. Now, in this particular situation, there may be multiple types of evidence before the court. There may be ocular evidence of the victim and her parents. There may be documentary evidence in the shape of birth certificate. There may be scientific evidence in the shape of ossification text. So now, the first thing that is required to appreciate the evidence in connection with the ace of the victim is to marshal the evidence on the point of case. Now this marshalling can be defined as the picking up various pieces of evidence on a particular disputed point of fact. And putting them together, so as to to examine their worth value and quality in a systematic scientific and logical manner. So that will require that all the oral evidence is examined. The oral testimony of the proscriptics have parents. Then whatever conclusion is arrived at on the basis of the view is taken on the basis of this oral evidence that has to be tested on the basis of the documentary evidence as well as scientific evidence. Only then a final, final view can be taken. Final finding can be recorded with regard to the ace of the victim. So this is something which we call the marshalling of evidence. Friends, as the church happens to be the backbone of the system of administration of justice. So the appreciation and marshalling happens to be the backbone of judgment or order. Because ultimately it is on the basis of appreciation that the church may assign reasons for acceptance or rejection of a particular piece of evidence. Otherwise, it may amount to an arbitrary process, which may be not in accordance with the doctrine of fear. Now proceeding further, it is necessary to understand what are the statutory principles which can be found in the evidence act with regard to the appreciation of evidence. Now in this regard, first and foremost is section 118 of the evidence act, which deals with the competence of the witness. Now as per section 118 of the Indian Evidence Act, a witness who has the capacity to understand the question and to answer it in a rational manner is a competent witness. Now section 118 nowhere prescribes that a witness blow a particular ace or above a particular ace will not be competent to be a witness. The only qualification attached to be a witness is that the witness has the understanding of the question and has the capacity to answer it in a rational manner. So there are numerous cases of honorable the apex court that even a child of five or six or seven years by way of his maturity of understanding may be a good witness in a particular case. If he if it is demonstrated before the court that he has the ability to understand the questions and to answer them in a logical manner. This provision has to be kept in mind for the particulars. The judges and lawyers many a times put a tag to a particular witness that this is the police witness. This is the relative witness. This is the very old witness. This is the child. Of course, such type of tagging may put the court to little extra caution caution in the sense that if it happens to be a child witness to first examine whether he has the capacity to understand the question. If he happens to be a very old witness, then again to find out the same thing. So, the message which flows from section 118 of the Indian evidence act is very clear. That it is only the competence of the witness, we should matter in the mind of the judge and in the mind of the lawyers who are there to assist the court in appreciating the evidence. The second provision in the evidence act which attracts our attention is section 134, 134, which, which very clearly provides that no particular number of witnesses are required to prove a particular fact. It happens so many times we say that there is a solitary witness, there is no corroboration, there is nothing there to support the witness. So, that may not be the ground to reject the testimony of a witness, because ultimately the law does not insist on the plurality of the witnesses. Rather the principle criteria with regard to the acceptance of a piece of evidence coming from a witness is the trustworthiness, the reliability is the inherent strength of the piece of evidence. Now, one more provision which is pertinent in this regard. In section 3, in which we do find a number of definitions including the definition of proved, disproved and not proved. Now, in this definition of proved and disproved, we find two criteria. One, that the judge after considering the matter before it either thinks that the fact has improved or secondly, considers its existence so probable that a prudent man in the similar circumstances will consider to exist or not exist. So, we find that the one important criteria with regard to the proved or disproved aspect of effect which basically depends upon the quality of the evidence is the probability effect. Then, lastly, we need to look at section 114, particularly illustration B of section 114 and section 133. Now, section 114 illustration B of the Indian Evidence Act that says that an accomplished shall be unworthy of credit unless corroborated by independent evidence in material particles. So, this one is the solitary provision in the entire evidence act which insists as a matter of law on corroboration. We do not find any other problems. And just see that the strength of this provision has been diluted in section 133 of the evidence act. So, section 133 of the evidence act says that a conviction shall not be invalid simply because it proceeds on the basis of uncorroborated testimony of evidence. Now, these two provisions taken together unmistakably indicate to the fact that the framers of the evidence act have put much more confidence in the judge with regard to the trustworthiness and reliability of a witness. Of course, that should be based on the very sincere scientific and systematic appreciation of evidence. And naturally, in this exercise, it just has to be able assisted by the lawyers for the parties. Because sometimes the judge may have its own perception with regard to a particular piece of evidence, and some important aspect or dimension of that piece of evidence may be overlooked by it. But here, if the lawyer is very, you see, aware about that aspect or dimension, then that can be put before the court in a very clear manner. So, these are the relevant provisions of law which we find in the evidence act and which have a very close bearing on the issue of appreciation of evidence. Now, let us proceed further and try to find out that ultimately what are the well established principles or the yardstick to appreciate the evidence. Now, as we discussed earlier, section three of the evidence act pertaining to the definition of proved and disproved refers to the probability factor. Now, this probability factor is the most natural factor with regard to the acceptance or rejection of a particular piece of evidence. So, suppose if I state on oath that in the morning I ran for almost 10 kilometers in five minutes, then how many of the participants in this webinar will accept my statement. Maybe that there are three or four more persons to support my testimony. In my humble view, each and every person will reject this piece of evidence. Because whatever may be the number of witnesses, maybe that it is not suffering from any ambiguity or discrepancy is still the statement itself is totally improbable. Running 10 kilometers in five minutes, meaning thereby two kilometers in one minute, not humanly possible. That is the first yardstick to measure equality and strength of a particular piece of evidence happens to be the factor of probability which flows from the definition of proved and disproved contained in section three of the evidence. This is only first qualifying test. Maybe the statement is that almost I ran one kilometer in five minutes. So now you will think that this statement is at least probable. It is true or false. It is a different thing. Then it qualifies the probability factor, which is the first factor. If a statement is not qualifying or a piece of evidence is not qualifying on the probability factor, then it has to be rejected without much further examination. But if the probability factor is just okay, then we have to see the intrinsic quality of that particular piece of evidence. And this intrinsic quality of a piece of evidence depends upon the that whether the statement is coherent. Whether the statement is devoid of any ambiguity, whether it is free from anomalies or exaggerations or material omissions, which may render it little untrustworthy. So here the judge has to examine that what is the intrinsic quality of a piece of evidence, meaning thereby whether it suffers from material omissions and contradictions. Whether there are certain aspects which are contradictory with the other piece of evidence on the same point, maybe of this witness itself or with other witnesses, because sometimes a witness is deposing something in the examination in chief. And when he is being tested during the cross examination, he may come out with almost different set of facts, just thereby denting the credibility of the witness on that particular point. So this is the role of the intrinsic value. And it has been said that if the inconsistencies or the omissions are of minor nature, then just if you are on a V, then just ignore them like pebbles. But if they are in the shape of boulders, then you have to stop and you have to think about the acceptability of that piece of evidence. Now, suppose the piece of evidence also qualifies this factor of intrinsic worth or intrinsic value. Then the third question with regard to this piece of evidence will arise as to what is the animus of the witness. Why ultimately he has come before the court, whether he is having some animus in favor of the witness, in favor of a party, in favor of the plaintiff or defendant, in favor of the prosecution or defense, or whether he had something else to grant. So that way, the third factor which need to be examined with regard to the quality of a piece of evidence is the animus of the witness. And in this regard, the fourth correlated aspect is the countenance of the witness reflected during the time of his or her examination. Under the code of civil procedure and under the code of criminal procedure, it has been advised that the judge may record the countenance of the witness, the demeanor of the witness, and that may assist the court and that may help the liars appearing for the respective parties to determine the quality and trustworthiness of the particular piece of evidence. Now, friends, the final thing with regard to this yardistic process of evaluating a piece of evidence is the approach of the judge or for that matter the approach of the answers for the parties should be integrated and not truncated. Meaning thereby that we cannot, we cannot evaluate a particular piece of evidence by just taking out here and there a particular line of particular parts. Ultimately, the things have to be examined and evaluated in their totality. And that is the message which has been conveyed by honourable the apex court of the country in the famous case of Harijan Thirupala versus public prosecutor, 2002 6 SCC 470. So now this is with regard to the process of appreciation and the yardistics which are available concerning this process. Now, I just refer to that if the discrepancies or the omissions are in the nature of pebbles, then the court must tread upon them. But if they are in the shape of boulders, then it is time to stop, don't try to jump over. And this statement has been beautifully made in the case of Krishna Mochi versus the state of Bihar, 2002 6 SCC 81. That is a three judge bench decision. Now, while appreciating the evidence, particularly the ocular evidence, the judge as well as the counsels must be very much aware of the fact that no person has a photographic map. Secondly, when something is happening, then he or she is overtaken by the evidence. The power of observation may differ from person to person. At the same time, the power to recall may also differ. And again, it has to be kept in mind that the sense of time, the sequence of events and the atmosphere at the time of the incident and the atmosphere during the examination of the witness. They have also their role in a different, different manner and a practical and a pragmatic approach has to be adopted in all these respects, if the court has to arrive at a just and fair decision. And of course, the learned counsels who are the officers of the court are supposed to assist the court in this process. Sometimes, by reminding the judge that no, no, the discrepancy is in the shape of Boulder, please don't try to jump over it. Or sometimes persuading that no, no, these are just very small pebbles and one can tread over it. Now, we can further discuss certain concepts which have overtaken our mind for many, many decades. Or I can say, since we joined this system of administration of justice, and it is necessary to deliberate upon those principles, because these principles sometimes affect the process of decision making. And maybe that sometimes it may just leave a gap between what is justice and what is injustice. The first thing is that let 100 guilty persons be acquitted, but not a single innocent person should be convicted. So if that happens to be the correct approach, then there may not be justice either to the victim or to the society. The balanced approach which should prevail in the mind of the judge as well in the mind of the lawyers is that neither a guilty person should be allowed to escape from the consequences of law, nor a innocent person should suffer at the hands of the justice delivery system. And that is the approach which has been recommended by honorable the apex court of the country in the case of state of West Bengal versus Orilal Jaiswal. That is 1994, 1 SCC page 73. So what may be the exact rule which has to be followed in current times so that the credibility of the criminal justice system enhances in the mind of the people and they are not tempted to take law in their hands. Under the misconception that no, there are no chances of justice being done by approaching or accessing the justice delivery system. They should have the firm belief that we will get justice by accessing the system which is very sound. Now, the next principle which we have been following is with regard to benefit of doubt in criminal cases. The rule of benefit of doubt is highly appreciable, because if there is a reasonable doubt in the mind of the judge with regard to the guilt of the accused, then it is better to stop the hands and to extend the benefit of doubt to the accused. But then this benefit of doubt is reasonable doubt and this reasonable doubt is based on sound logic and reason. It is not a flimsy doubt, it is not a doubt which is just imagination of the uncertain mind and in this regard we can very well refer to the principles of law laid down by honorable the apex court of the country in two cases. Firstly, that state of West Bengal versus Ori Luljeswal and secondly, the case of Indarsingh Varshaj state, 1978, 4 SCC 161. Now, the third principle which we have just seen being discussed many, many times is I will just take up all the queries and the questions which are being raised by the esteemed participants. First, please let me complete and then it will be something we will discuss the doubts which are there in the mind of the honorable listeners. Now, the third principle which has puzzled us for long is falses in omnibus. It means that false in wanting and false in everything. Now, friends, it has repeatedly been remarked by honorable apex court of the country that this doctrine is neither a sound rule of law nor a sound rule of practice and at least it is not at all applicable in our criminal justice system. The reason is very clear. This is a famous case of the state of UP versus Anil Singh, 1980, a year 1980. In that case, the apex court pointed out that you hardly come across a witness who has not exerited or who has not omitted to state something which she was or she was supposed to state. And this is simply because there is a human tendency, tendency to forget something, tendency to process the things in one manner, tendency to add embroidery to aversion so that it is little more believed by the court in a more particular manner. But then, if a witness is found to be reliable on the central aspects of the issue, and if this embroidery is of very, you see, trifling nature, then that has to be referred to at the time of appreciation and has to be put aside. Because, ultimately, we have to see that whether the witness is trustworthy or reliable. And if there are very minor discrepancies, then definitely the court should be persuaded to accept that. Now, when I say that the witness can be relied upon, despite that there are some improvements or embroideries, then that should be of natural character and insignificant nature. And if there are only very essential points which are very significant for the determination of the case, then of course, the judge shall be very much justified in rejecting such piece of evidence. So, the next issue comes with regard to cooperation. If we go through the judgments, particularly at the trial court level, then there may be many, many cases where the testimony of a witness is rejected, simply assigning the reason that there is no independent corroboration to the testimony of the witness. But then, as I told you in the beginning, the rule of corroboration as a rule of law is found in illustration B2 section 114 of David Ansek, and that too has been diluted in section 133 of David Ansek. This is a famous case of Vadi Vilu Thiva. And in that case, the apex court has very beautifully examined that ultimately where a court would be justified in demanding corroboration. And in that case, the apex court had said that a witness can fall in either of the three categories. Firstly, he may be wholly reliable. Secondly, he or she may be wholly unreliable. And thirdly, that he is partly reliable and partly underlined. So, when a witness is wholly reliable, and if the court has reached this conclusion after proper appreciation of the evidence available before the court, then it has to be rejected. No amount of corroboration can help the court in case of such a witness, wholly unreliable. Now, another case is that of wholly reliable. The apex court has said that if the witness is wholly reliable, then no corroboration is required in such a case. Because if the testimony of a witness is of that sterling character, then why to seek corroboration? The citation of this case, Vadi Vilu Thiva is AIR 1957 Supreme Court 614. And the principle laid down in this case has been reiterated in many cases, including one reported in 2003 to SCC 401. Now, this third category, partly reliable and partly reliable. This opens the scope for seeking corroboration and what type of corroboration will work basically depends on what is the ultimately this partly reliable and partly unreliable tenor of the evidence of evidence. Sometimes corroboration from the other witnesses may work. Sometimes the court may demand that no corroboration should be by independent evidence. And that will depend on the facts and circumstances of the case. Now, this is with regard to the corroboration issue. Now, one more maxim which we have come across many a times is res ipsa laquita. Now, res ipsa laquita is a basically a principle which was applied in the cases of torts. It means that the things itself is being. So if the things are by themselves speaking, and there is no other evidence, then of course, the court may be justified in drawing inference on those facts, which we constitute circumstantial evidence, and when put together, they indicate very clearly towards a particular situation. That is something but then it has generally been found that this doctrine is not applicable in criminal cases. Of course, we will find some cases relating to accident where this doctrine has also even been applied in criminal cases. Now, this is with regard to those principles which we have throughout been encountered in our journey in this system of administration of justice. Now, we go to the next part of the discussion. And that is the appreciation in the case of circumstantial evidence. Now, when we talk about the quality of the evidence, then it is very clear that hearsay is no evidence except in cases specifically provided under the law at section 6 and section 32 of the evidence. But then this circumstantial evidence is not hearsay evidence. When we go through section 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 up to section 16, then we find that there are various situations, various circumstances including motive, previous conduct, subsequent conduct, intention, occasion, cause, effect, which also demonstrate in very loud terms with regard to the facts, with regard to the reality. And particularly in criminal cases where many a times it is almost impossible to gather direct testimony by way of ocular testimony that the courts have applied this doctrine of circumstantial evidence and have recorded the findings with regard to guilt. Now, the principles in this regard are well-settled and have successively been stated by Honorable the apex court of the country in many cases. Firstly, that all those circumstances should be proved, fully proved by Honorable the apex court of the country. Secondly, that these circumstances or these facts which constitute the part of the circumstantial evidence should constitute together a chain, which unerringly points singularly towards the guilt of the act. So, if the situation is that there is still a doubt with regard to the some other person, then definitely the circumstantial evidence cannot be made basis for arriving at the finding of guilt. Now, in this regard, the principles of law have been enumerated very clearly in a number of cases, and we can refer to one case, the state of Madhya Pradesh versus Sanjay Roy. It is AIR 1952, Supreme Court 343. So, this is with regard to circumstantial evidence. Now, one very important factor which comes repeatedly before the courts is with regard to the trustworthiness of the police officers who depose before the court with regard to the investigation of the kids or various actions taken by them during the process of investigation. Only yesterday I was going through a brief that was a case of murder by hired clerks, and I could see that the investigating officer has tried to interpolate so many things. He recorded the statement of the witness who spoke about the enmity between the deceased and accused, and when billed during the process of cross examination, he admitted that at an earlier occasion, soon after the commission of the offense, this witness spoke that there was no enmity of the deceased with any person known to him. So, meaning thereby this first statement, maybe of course it was recorded, but it was not produced before the court, though there was a mention in the case diary, and the subsequent statement was almost a interpolation that was placed before the court. So, there may be police officers who are highly partitioned, they may have a particular bank with regard to the case, and if it can be demonstrated before the court that the particular investigating officer or police officer was not independent, was biased, was investigating the case with a particular design to arrive at a particular conclusion, and definitely the court in the first stage should be very careful in accepting such evidence, and if the things are serious, then there should be rejection of such evidence. Now, the ultimate message which comes from this particular aspect relating to the testimony of the police witnesses is that a serious effort has to be made that whether you see simply saying that an investigating officer is interested in the success of the case may not by itself be sufficient to reject his testimony in a mechanical manner. There should be something apart from this factor so as to reject the testimony of a witness on the ground that he has not conducted the investigation in a fair manner. Because the ultimate thing which should be there in the process right from the stage of investigation till the delivery of judgment is the process of fairness, and if the fairness is compromised, then the court is justified in being little extra cautious. And then it becomes the bias duty of the councils appearing for respective parties, I will say even the prosecution to put before the court all the facts, so which can help in determining the truth in the matter. Now, when it comes with regard to the witnesses, one we evidence we find in many cases the child. Now, as we as we discussed earlier that section 118 of the evidence act does not. Stipulate any specific qualification with regard to any witness, except that the witness is able to understand the nature of the question. And secondly, that he can give a logical answer to the question. And in that regard, we have the process that when a child witness comes before the court, then certain preliminary questions are being put to the witness, so as to ascertain that whether this witness is having that degree of maturity, which can which can make him qualified to be a witness in the case. And it is only after that that the child witness will have to examine. And if this witness is found to be truthful, of course, it has been cautioned by the honorable apex court of the country, that it is very easy to influence the child. It is very easy to lure a child. And it is also very easy to create a witness and to just force him to give a particular type of evidence. So while appreciating the evidence of a child witness, the court should be very careful about all these aspects. Because if a finding is recorded without a sound basis, then definitely it may result in injustice, either to the victim or to the victim. So these are the areas, of course, this field of appreciation of evidence is very vast. In the sense that there are questions with regard to the use of first information report, the use of a statement recorded under section 161 of the CRPC, the use of the previous statement. But then the basic thing is that the evidence, ocular evidence first has to be scanned and examined by keeping in mind so many factors which we have discussed. And when it comes to the statement, previous statement in the shape of a statement under section 161, then we know that it can be used only to contradict the witness by the defense and with the permission of the court. In certain specific circumstances by the court, by the prosecution. At the same time, previous statement may also be relevant. If it is not a statement under section 161 CRPC for corroboration and contradiction. Likewise, the first information report many times first information report is used even to corroborate the testimony of other witnesses, which cannot be used at all. Because it is a previous statement of the person who has lost the report, or at which instance the report has been recorded. So that can that is the limited use of the first information report. So friends, I think this is something which I wanted to share with you. The last point in this, in this entire discussion relates to the difference between appreciation in civil cases and criminal cases. Now, the standard of proof, which we find with regard to the criminal cases, and which is very much settled without any idea of that, that is the proof beyond reasonable doubt, and which proceeds on the presumption of innocence regarding the guilt of the accused. And that has to be followed. Otherwise, there may be danger of injustice being done. But this principle of proof beyond reasonable doubt is not applicable in civil cases. The principle which we apply in civil cases is the proof by preponderance of probabilities, probability, a factor which we discussed in the life of definition of proved and disproved finding place in section three of the evidence. Now, the distinction is very logical. In criminal cases, the consequences are almost irreversible. And if a finding of guilt is recorded on the basis of preponderance of probabilities, then there may be many, many chances of injustice being done to the accused. But in civil cases, the situation is different. Firstly, the history of the civil cases is almost very intricate. There may be a lot of witness regarding which the evidence have died, witnesses have died, or that they have migrated to some place, or that they are not available. So therefore, it is the preponderance factor which weighs in the mind of the court while recording a finding in civil cases. That is the basic difference. Otherwise, if we just go through the provisions of the Indian Evidence Act, except for the fact that certain provisions like confession, which is provided in section 24 to section 30 of the Evidence Act, exclusively applicable to the criminal cases, and admission in the Stupol exclusively applicable in criminal civil cases. But otherwise, the Evidence Act does not draw a line with regard to the nature and standard of proof in civil or criminal cases. Now, this is something which I wanted to share. Of course, it has been a wonderful opportunity to speak to all the esteemed participants in this webinar through this media, which has enabled us to come together at a platform and to discuss an issue of perennial importance in the system of administration of justice. And I will be very happy if certain questions and queries are raised and we can make the entire this webinar a little more interactive and more useful. Thank you, because if there are any questions, I will be happy to respond to those questions because I could just see was speaking, there were certain queries in the chat box. So now we can just refer to those queries, and I will be very happy to respond to those queries. This is by Ismail Nehl. What happens to the evidence if witness dies and could not be cross examined. If witness dies, section 32 and 33 are there. Section 32 all speaks about the witnesses who have died. And the alternates which are available to bring the evidence in respect of such witnesses. If one is that dying declaration, then there are other other aspects also in some cases some recording may be there some statement may be there. That can be brought something is listened or heard by some other witness that has been made admissible of course that is hearsay, but then section 32 and 32 33 of the evidence act, they are exceptions to the rule of hearsay. And those if the if this particular situation is covered by a particular provisions containing section 32 and 33 of the evidence act, then that can be brought on back. Normally people ask that this is one of the questions that we have received on the WhatsApp, it says. Little more loudly. This is what is the relevance of the FIR for the purposes of evidence. Now the relevance of FIR now FIR firstly, it is simply which gives but the gives you see a motion to the entire criminal process puts the criminal law into motion. That is the first thing with regard to the FIR and the second thing is that it is a statement of the maker. So, when it is a statement of the maker, it can be used for contradiction as well as corroboration of the person if he is examined before the court. Now this FIR can also be used as a dying declaration if the person who has lost the FIR is a victim and has died in the incident and the issue of his death is in question in that very case. And the thirdly, we have the the well settled law that an ends an FIR FIR is not expected to be an encyclopedia. It is simply which which puts the criminal law into motion. So, sometimes many times it happens that why it is not there in the FIR, why that has not been put in the FIR, you see the FIR is lost when really there is a grave crime, then it is lost in a very informal way. No, and if a thought has been given to losing the FIR then it loses its its velocity and its strength. So, it the instantaneous character of the FIR attaches value to it and if it is a thought out FIR it has been pre-planned and you see some manipulation is there then the value of the FIR decreases. But then ultimately it is a statement of the maker. This is by Abhishek he says, how do you read the evidence of the hostile witness? You see this expression hostile witness has nowhere been used in the evidence. What we find is only that if a witness is called by a party and he is just going away from the expected lines then the party calling the witness may seek the permission of the court to put questions to that witness. Questions to that witness which can only be put during cross examination. Now, what are the questions which can be put during cross examination? Firstly, leading questions can be put under section 142-43 of the evidence that then the questions under section 146. Impeaching the you see testing the veracity of the witness who is what is his position and impeaching the credit 155 of the evidence that. If a witness is hostile and if after all this grilling by declaring him unfavorable you see it is a Supreme Court has cautioned many a times that it is not very justified to put the tag of hostile witness. It is simply the process of lawsuits that questions which can be put during the cross examination may be permitted to be put to a witness of the party was called the witness. So, even if after such examination. If there is a truth in the statement, if it inspires confidence, then that part of the statement can be accepted by the court can be relied upon by the court which is found to be trustworthy. Meaning, thereby that wholesome rejection of the testimony of hostile witness is neither contemplated nor stipulated anything. But then, because by the very tenor because the witness has come to say something and he's deposing something contrary and the party who has called the witness has sought the permission of the court to challenge his testimony. So, little extra caution is always necessary before acting upon the testimony of such a witness. Bhanu Pratap says, what do you mean by leading question and what are the examples? Yeah. Now, leading question section 141 defines leading question. And then it says that leading questions are not permitted in examination in chief, except when the fact is undisputed or admitted or introduced. But a leading question is a tool in the hand of the cross examiner, because it puts the witness in such a situation so that he thinks that everything is known to the lawyer who is cross examining me. Now, leading question is a question which leads the witness to a specific answer.  Did you heard some cries coming from the road? Yes.  Yes. And you see that the one person was wearing the white trousers and a blue shirt and another one this. Yes. So now, what the witness is doing is simply saying yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. He is being led. And here lies a great danger that this witness may be tutored, may be advised to say yes to certain questions and not know to certain other questions. And definitely this way of answering may not be in accordance with what we say fear trial process, because this is not fair. If you lead the witness on all the points then his testimony becomes where you see totally ineffective, has no value in the eyes of Allah. So that is, I think I am clear that what is leading question. A leading question is a question which has the answer to the question within it. And a clever witness or a witness who has been beforehand advised to react or respond in a particular manner can find out that answer from the question itself. But then if the question is that at what time you reach the spot. So now, two things are there. The time is not suggested. But what is suggested that he reached at this point. So here it should start that ultimately what happened. If the witness say that after just hearing a lot of noise, I reached the spot, then the question may be at what time. So you cannot suggest or you cannot assume that he reached the spot. Let it be stated in so many words by the witness that he reached the spot. So this is the tenor and the quality of the leading questions. If an investigating officer died before deposing evidence, what can be taken for evidence of the hostile witness and other part of the evidence by the IU? Yeah, yeah. So if the investigating officer has died before deposing the court, then in the process of investigation, so many other witnesses are generally associated. Now, those witness suppose these are the part of the arrest. There are witnesses of arrest. Disclosure statements recorded under section 27 of the evidence that seizure of the articles from the implementing articles from the witnesses. Now you always there are some other witnesses available. If those witnesses don't support, then it is something nothing can be done. But then as well as the statement recorded by the by the IO. That is statement under section 161 of the CRPC. And that has that is that is required to be used, particularly by the defense. So, so defense has the defense has proved what was required that this a to a or B to B or C to C, and to formally bring it on record what is necessary that the person who is convergent with the signature of the investigating officer has to be called as a witness and he will prove that this is in the handwriting of the such and such officer or it bears the signature of such and such officer. That will provide sufficient proof in that. In the same case, which two persons are minor and two are major. What happens to the evidence who had already given the evidence before the session court and died before giving evidence before the juvenile justice court. Now the question, as you understand is that there are four persons to be tried for a particular offense to our minor, meaning thereby they are juvenile to be tried by the juvenile justice world and to our major and to be tried before the regular court. So now the testimony of the regular court cannot as such can be because both are separate proceedings and independent. Now, one is the inquiry, that is not trying what is being conducted for the juvenile justice board is a inquiry with regard to that particular offense. And what is being done before the sessions court or the magistrate court is a trial. So that evidence cannot be used, particularly to just arrive at the final conclusions, but many a times it happens that the statement of a witness who deposed in one manner before the sessions court and is deposing altogether in a different manner before the juvenile court or vice versa. That is a previous statement of a witness recorded in a judicial proceeding and that can always be used to corroborate or contradict. Rania says, like you're just shared, you have read your date that you know justice board would only inquire. So what is the procedure under the juvenile justice board. Now juvenile justice board the procedure is very simple. Firstly, the it is informal, but then witnesses are produced, and they are examined and they are cross examined because unless the testimony of a witness is tested on the cross examination, it is no evidence in the eyes of law. So the procedure is informal, but then ultimately, when it comes to the determination of the truth, then the process of examination in chief and cross examination has to be gone through. This is by the answer he says that let's assume the when the incident occurred that the witness was minor, but with the flux of time he becomes major. Yeah, make any difference. As per the law which is prevailing in our country, you see, there was a decision in the case of Arnaud Das by a bench headed by Honorable Justice R. C. Lahoti. And in that case, it was it was said that the, the, the weather person has to be to be tried before a juvenile court or before a regular court has to be decided on the basis of his is when he is coming or is produced before the court. But then that was that was a decision to my my personal view that was very much on logical lines. Because ultimately, you see, there is a what what we we seek to achieve is a trial for a person who is of tender years. Now, if the person himself or herself is not of the tender years, then what is the fun in trying him or her before a juvenile justice board, which is which is there to assure that the children are not just put to almost at par with the criminals of violence is so suppose it a child commits some has some and some offense at the age of 14 years, and he is able to escape from the law for 20 years. So now, at 34 he is arrested, apprehended. Now you see that at 34 he should be tried in the juvenile justice board, but he is being tried, because that is the law for life. That is the law for length. And that is the final interpretation given by honorable the apex court of the country that he should be tried before the juvenile because the age of juvenileity has to be determined on the date of the commission of the maybe whatever be the logic. So in that case, even if he is apprehended after 30 years you see there are cases. I think a couple of weeks ago I just came across a news that the person accused of murder was apprehended after 25 years. And he committed the offense when he was around 20 years. So you see at 45 he is apprehended. Now he has to be tried because the law of limitation doesn't allow him to escape. Suppose if he was only 14 years at that time and after 25 he becomes now 39 years old. So now 39 years old person being tried with the juveniles in the juvenile justice board is simply very, very little to my personal view very politely put it is not very logical. This is what Sharma he says, what do you mean by impeaching the evidence? What do you mean by impeaching the evidence of the witness? Impeaching. Impeaching. Now it is not the evidence which is impeached, it is the credit of the witness which is impeached. Impeaching means putting a question mark to the credibility of a person. Well, I impeach you. I impeach you means I raise a question with regard to what you say. So there are methods given in the Indian evidence set to impeach the credit of a witness. So that is very much there by confronting him from the previous statement by demonstrating that he has been bribed. That by demonstrating that he has been influenced some offer has been given to him. And these are the methods to impeach the credit of a witness. And many times they are very successful because unless the court is very sure that the witness is of a very sterling value, very reliable, his or her testimony cannot be accepted and used in a mechanical manner. So it is impeaching the credit of a witness is a powerful tool given by the Indian evidence set in the hands of the adversary to bring the reality before the court with regard to the credit of that witness, the reliability of that witness. This is by, what do you say? Santosh says, how do you see the veracity of a child witness making a statement? Our veracity of a child witness. You see, there are two things with regard to the child witness. One is the competency of the child witness. Now competency of the child witness has to be determined as per what we find in section 118 of the evidence act, whether he has the capacity to understand the nature of question put to him. And secondly, he has the rational capacity to answer that question. Now to ascertain the capacity the court or the judge is required to put some 7, 8, 10 questions, so as to determine that whether the child is having that capacity. Once the capacity is there, the child is put to examination in chief and to test the veracity of the witness always it is followed by cross examination. So in cross examination, the defense can elicit certain very important and pertinent facts, which can go to impeach the credit of the witness or to discredit a child witness. So suppose in cross examination, the question is raised that, oh, in the morning, such and such person told you that you have to depose before the court in this and this manner. And if he says yes, then you see, it simply demonstrated that he was influenced. But if the answer is yes, I was asked that I have to depose before the court in a very, very truthful manner, and I have to depose with regard to the incident, and that cannot be the that we cannot say that he has been influenced in that very case. This question is, there is a trial one is a minor and one is a major. Yes. How does the magistrate work on that, in respect of the two accused. You see magistrate has no business with a minor. The matter has to be dealt with by the juvenile justice board. The movement magistrate comes to know that the person standing before him accused of a crime is a juvenile. Then matter cell force with be sent to the juvenile justice board without any further action on the part of the magistrate. And the major person he has to face the trial as per the as per the procedure laid down in the court of criminal procedure. The next question he's automatically flown in the on the YouTube he says that then what happens in respect of juvenile what will be done in his manner. The person magistrate who cannot entertain. Then what will what will be the subsequent proceedings to be occurred there in the proceeding will be that the police shall be advised to produce the the the person who is juvenile before the juvenile justice board. And the juvenile justice board will proceed with the inquiry. In accordance with the procedure prescribed in the JJ act, and will will reach a finding and if the finding is there with regard to the that he or he or he is involved in the commission of the office and whatever consequences are stipulated in the JJ act with regard to the he has to be sent in the observation or whatever it is children home that has to be that the maximum I think confinement is only three years. These are the questions are thank you for sharing your knowledge. It's always a pleasure hearing from you. Thank you. Thank you very much. We hope we remain connected for all these insights from you. Not only the National Academy and the MP people are enriched, but with this, as you rightly said that this invention during the testing times and the discovery of all this has helped us to connect at distant places that we have seen questions coming on the YouTube questions coming on the chat. Right. And I am in Chandigarh, you are in Madhya Pradesh people from all over India. Yes. In fact, I have received so many. No, it was it was really a wonderful opportunity to just share my views and share my understanding of law. I don't say what right or wrong or perfect or imperfect what is my my understanding of the relevant provisions of law and that I shared with the with the esteemed participants who are connected online in this webinar, and it has really been a matter of privilege. I would like to extend my thanks to all the other participants, and I'm also very, very thankful to you for providing me this wonderful platform this wonderful opportunity, actually, which, which gave me an opportunity to refresh myself, first of all, and then to communicate with such a wonderful audience. Thank you. Thank you very much. It's always a pleasure connecting with you. Friends, at 6pm, we will have the session by former judge from Punjab and Haryana revenue law in respect of partition proceedings, though that session will be in Punjabi.


I'll get them from Express and I will ask you what is the main take here so far, you think we should take with us? Well, my main take is that we are meeting this year in a very special context, extraordinarily emotional all over the world, with the international situation in general, which is deteriorating for a number of reasons, plus on top of that, this new war between Israel and the Hamas, but with the huge regional and international consequences, we are meeting in the Gulf, in a Muslim country, and the question of course that everybody was asking before the beginning of this meeting was the kind of consequences it will have on the meeting itself. And therefore my main take is that it went extraordinarily well in terms of ambiance. The WPC, we are not specialized, that is, year after year we discuss all kinds of subjects with the spirit of global governance, even if this term is a little bit obsolete now in certain ways, but nonetheless it still means something because if there is no longer such thing as global governance, the world will evolve in a chaotic direction, if you can say chaotic direction, it's two worlds do not go very well together. So that's one point. We have always stressed the concept of middle power, which is I think more relevant than ever today, and we have always promoted the concept of what I call a reasonable openness that is far from the initial utopia of globalization, the idea that nevertheless the world should remain open, but not too much because too much openness, unprepared openness can lead towards greater difficulties as we see with the migration problem for instance. So the interesting thing is that we could discuss all these issues. We could allude and refer to the immediate short-term difficulties, including the two wars, Ukraine and Israel Hamas, and everything went in terms of exchanges, of style of communication among us, etc. It went in very smooth and mutually with a lot of mutual respect for everybody, and I think it's a great success because this is what we have aimed to do with this World Policy Conference, you know, a club where from the people, countries coming from the four, five continents, and to be able to discuss, to listen to others, to express the viewpoints of everybody, but also to pay attention and respect to the viewpoint of the other. In that sense, I think it was a real success, and I think we need in the current world more places where this sort of communication can be practiced. So sorry for that long answer, but I would like to ask one footnote. Today we are Sunday, if I am not mistaken, and we had this morning meeting session on religion, but something not in the classical sense because in conferences like this, when you speak of religions, you think of the political aspects of religion. I wanted to have a session on religions, on the major, what they call here the Abrahamic religions. I wanted to have one session where we could discuss the issue of religions, but from the viewpoint, how do religions contribute to the good of humanity, whereas there is a tendency to consider, unfortunately, religions more and more as troublemakers, and we associate more and more religions with wars, unfortunately. So the decision to have such a session had been taken much before the 7th of October. The question after the 7th of October was, is it reasonable to keep a session like that three weeks after the beginning of the Israel Hamas war, and I decided to maintain it and to maintain it with people who represent something in the three major Abrahamic regions, that is, Christians, Muslims and Jews, if I take the order in terms of the... In the time perspective, I should start with the Jews, Christians and Muslims. And frankly speaking, and until the last minute, I wasn't sure about how it would go. And I think it went remarkably well, much beyond my expectations. In two ways. One is that we really, that was short, one hour, that really the speakers spoke about the subject, I mean, that I had assigned to them. They did not try to escape. And the second good surprise, I must say, is that the Muslim speaker, who is an important person, he has an important position, spoke essentially the same language than the other two, which means something. It means something because it shows, it's very courageous. I think that in a country like this, in a Muslim country, to speak the way he spoke is very significant, very significant, because as everybody knows, the public opinion in the Muslim world is extraordinarily emotional about the events. Of course, the Jewish community as well. So if I take an optimistic interpretation of this, I take it as meaning that there are people in the Muslim world who are responsible people and who seem to be prepared to work, to change, to ask to take the lead, or of a more positive approach to these formidable problems that we are facing. So I mention this because it is today, the third day, the last day, and it was, as I said, an original session. And so I take it as a big success for our concept. Sorry, it's a bit long. It's okay? Yeah, yeah. Okay. Thank you for your explanation.  As of now, it's a new world. So Israel, Hamas or the former war. So Ukraine, Russia is ongoing. But there are some opinions or stances depending on the countries. And so I'd like to know how should each government do in future to make global governance much more better? I'd like to know your opinion. You see, the big problem is that the world today is very much divided. Because you have conflicts at various levels. Today, the most important, the deepest conflict is the one which is today still cold, if I may say so, that is between the competition between the US and China. This is the most fundamental conflict. It's very difficult to make specific predictions on how it will evolve. By the way, one of the mini-sessions here which was I think quite interesting for at least some participants was the discussion with Mr. Long, who is a former Chinese executive chief of Hong Kong who made extraordinarily clearly the attitude of the position of mainland China on Taiwan. Clearly, China is not what he said is not particularly original, but his style of expressing was very, very clear on an issue such as Taiwan. China wanted to absorb China as soon as possible to full stop. And the whole style of his intervention, of his answers to my questions was difficult to be more clear than he was. So that means that the possibility of major conflicts is still there. It is clear that the American approach to global governance is not compatible with the Chinese approach to global governance and so forth and so on. Now, at lower levels, we have a series of big conflicts. If we take the case of Ukraine, the Ukraine war is far from the perspective of an end to that war is very remote today. And as we have seen, Russia is now becoming more and more a junior partner of China. The so-called global south now is much closer to the Russian position on Ukraine in the sense that they consider that this is not their problem, that the West, in fact, is behaving still as an imperial power or a collection of former colonial powers and so forth and so on. So what I mean is that Russia is much less isolated than what most people say. We see that Iran, for instance, has clearly moved in the eastern direction, et cetera, et cetera. So we have a collection of problems like this, Middle East, as we see the Gulf. So the division of the world is at various levels. So the question is that in such a context, what does it mean, global governance? Because the ideal of global governance can work only if there is an agreement between the major, the great majority of countries, an agreement to have it work. You have to agree that there should be something like global governance that has to work for the benefit of the world, but if there is no disagreement, if there is no agreement, on the end, you will not have an agreement on the means. Global governance is a means to an end. If you don't agree about the end, it cannot work. So one of the consequences of this is that the common goods, the global public goods, if you wish, are unlikely to be treated correctly. I am thinking particularly of climate and health and global health. On climate, of course, we had here, especially from the Emirates, a positive approach because they are working very hard to have a successful COP28. But as we know, the last cops were not particularly successful. I hope that the COP28 will be more successful, but it's not sure at all because how can you have bold agreement, for instance, between the US and China in such a context? It's very difficult. So the remarkable thing is that the very concept of commons of humanity or global public good, it's a concept that is relevant now, but 10 or 15 or 20 years ago. It was an abstract concept. Today it's no longer an abstract concept because we all know it everywhere in the world.  But the capacity to act collectively to face this reality and to improve the situation is lacking for the reasons I just tried to mention. So if the question is, are the conditions ripe to allow improvement of global governance and climate, my rough answer would be very unlikely. And the same for global health. This morning also we had the session on how to fight or to prevent future pandemics. The brief answer is clear. We are not progressing at all in this issue. If we speak in clear language, that means that the probability in the next few years to have decades but relatively near future, the probability to have another pandemic is very high. Because we have not taken, we have not even started to take the measures, the collective measures that would allow to kill the pandemics at the very beginning if it occurred. That would be the main reason of that. That's kind of a paradox that topics are much more interconnected than before and the world is even more divided than before. How can we overcome that paradox? First, I don't think it is a paradox because this interconnection is also the cause of divisions. So it increases interdependence in an erratic way, but at the same time it exacerbates tensions, divisions. That's the paradox of communication. The paradox of communication is very multi-dimensional. For instance, if you ask the question, globally is the world as a whole, are there more tragedies today than there were during the Middle Ages or even 50 years ago? The answer is probably not much more, but everything is visible. Today, everything which is happening here in Abu Dhabi can be observed everywhere in the world and vice versa. In the Soviet times, there were tragedies every day in the Soviet Union, but nobody heard about them. At the time in the 70s, at the time of my beginnings in the field of international affairs, you had the Vietnam War. We were, of course, informed on the Vietnam War, but we didn't go the details. Today, you would know every detail about the atrocities that were committed every day in Vietnam. So there is also a perception problem. That's why I'm talking about a reasonably open world because when any every country imports the problem of the others, it becomes unlivable. You cannot live like that. We are talking these days about the issue of importing the Israeli-Palestinian issue in Europe, for instance, or in France because of the Muslim community particularly. But this problem is not only about the Israeli-Palestinian issue. It's a much more general problem because politics starts with emotions. The rationalization, the abstract thinking about problems comes, of course, at a different level, but the problems politically start with emotions. So this is why I think that this is why I use this term, reasonable openness. So again, it's a long answer to the question. It's not a paradox. My name is Insan Khan from South Korea. I noticed that you have put a lot of effort in this year's WPC to talk more about technology, including AI and so forth and so on. It is an opportunity. Nobody would say no to that. It is an opportunity. But in this time where a lot of countries are preparing for elections next year or sometime this year, where do you think the global government should put more focus on starting from now to maybe regulate and to prevent its side effects or to promote so that people can explore the infinite potential of the technology? That's, of course, a very interesting question. Now I will refer to a conference that you know well, you personally, which is the World Knowledge Forum of your boss, Chairman Changdae Won, the Maikung Group. And as I told you privately, in Korea, they have been the last for a number of years at the center of the thinking on new technologies, taking the best of these technologies to develop a smart this or smart that. Everything is smart. And I have always learned a lot of things through this World Knowledge Forum, including last time, which was in mid-September. So that was one and a half months ago, closely. And I was very much struck by two persons, the founder of Open Artificial Intelligence, the young men who, well, they developed charge-GPT. And the other one was the co-founder of Apple. Vosniak, I think it's a Polish name. And the two of them made very clear, including what is Altman, the guy of Open AI. Said very, very clearly, Artificial Intelligence is, well, I say it in my own words, but the idea was very clear. It can be very dangerous. So we should think of regulating, you know. And since then, because at the time, that was the first time for me that I heard that recommendation made so explicitly by prominent people in the field. It was very interesting because just ten years ago, all the young leaders, business people of the Silicon Valley and elsewhere, would never speak of regulating the internet or whatever of the digital world. Well, today they seem to be frightened or scared by the consequences of their own creations or creatures. So, and since this meeting a few weeks ago, I am more, of course, careful to following the opinions of the various actors in this field. And of course you have two camps, but I think the camp of people who think that regulation is necessary is increasing in numbers. Now, the big problem is that once you have recognized that, what do you do? Because to speak about regulation, it's a word after all, but to regulate what and how. And it's always the same problem. For example, in the U.S., usually they do not like to regulate, but if one country, let's say, the majority of countries regulate, and you have one, two or three of the major actors who do not, the result is easy to predict until some sort of catastrophe occurs. So it's a very good example of the current world. We have a vague understanding that things cannot continue indefinitely as they do, but we don't know too much what to do. I said that global governance, you have the first thing is just to have an agreement on the end and then on the means. But if you agree neither on the ends nor on the means, you are in trouble. We may be in such a stage today. Go back to reformulate what I asked you in the first place, but it's a bit different. What did you learn? Is there anything you learned during these days? I surprised you. Something that surprised you? Someone who said something that helped you? It's more important than that, yeah. Or maybe not. No, learning is not easy. I learned constantly, including from you. So I am a machine learning by myself. So learning, I would say the question perhaps. So learning, I learned constantly, just sometimes listening. And you know when I am here during three days, I do so many things at the same time that sometimes it's difficult for me. Even if I look concentrated on what they say, I may think of a totally different thing because when you do too many things at the same time, it may be difficult. But so there are a number of details that I learned. So what do I do? I say, well, I should be more careful to understand this or that, to dig a little bit further on that issue. But you are not talking about this sort of learning. If you mean by learning being surprised, no. I was not surprised because I follow things constantly, so I was not surprised. And you know when you are prepared in detail, you know, an event like this, it's unlikely that you are really surprised. This is why I answered the general atmosphere. My initial answer may be sort of a very sexy answer. But nonetheless, again today, I repeat that, today the way the religious, the session of religion went was, I can tell you that early this morning, I had reasons not to be sure at all about how it could evolve. So, you know, in international affairs and more generally in complex situations, all the difficulty is to assess correctly the small signals. You have to be very careful about the interpretations of certain facts, et cetera, that most of the people would not even care about, you know. So perhaps, I hope I am not too optimistic, perhaps if I take a global view about the discussion of so many subjects, if I take that all together, my conclusion might be that on the whole, positive attitudes, or attitudes of responsibility seem to prevail over negative attitudes. But I could be slightly more precise. For instance, if you take the Israeli Hamas issue, I prefer essentially Israeli Hamas because I am not sure that it is easy to really a Israeli-Palestinian problem. That's going to be discussed, you know. So Hamas has become an actor in a section, in itself. But when you talk with reasonable people about it, they say that there is no government, apparently, you know, there is no government even in the region who really want to create chaos. If you look in detail to the declaration of Mr. Nasrallah the other day, yesterday I think it was, and clearly it illustrates what I am saying. So if it's actually in Iran, it's unlikely that they want to commit to start a real war or to have to confront the United States directly. It's very, very unlikely. So where is the real risk? Apart from the tragedies for the people who are in the middle of the fight, that is the Israeli and the Gaza people. I think the answer is the public opinions and the public opinions in the Middle East, in particular, but not only the Middle East because we see in Europe, et cetera, et cetera. And that is not controllable. So whereas governments can at least control their decisions, but public opinions, mob movements, demonstrations, this you cannot control easily. So this reinforces my remark about responsibility. I think all the speakers here, depending of course on what they were talking about, their field of expertise, et cetera, but I think they spoke with a sense of responsibility. And I like that. So you can tell me that I did not invite people. No, no. But they said there is a bit of a contradiction because you previously said that the world doesn't agree nor the objective on the means. So I would ask a little bit, as I would ask to a politician, have you ever seen such a configuration in your lifetime? This reminds me of a story of a church, a man in a parish, a priest of a protestant parish somewhere, who asked an artist to paint an angel for his church. And after a few weeks, the artist comes back with a beautiful angel. And the priest discovers that the angel has shoes. Shoes, shoes. So he tells the artist, well, have you ever seen an angel with shoes? And the other guy says, and you, have you ever seen an angel without shoes? So he laughs, not you, but he laughs. I'll make a special one for you. So that's, do you speak about a paradox of contradiction? This is an apparent contradiction, the sort of contradiction that you find in complexity. When there are complex situations, you always have an apparent contradiction. But in this case, I don't see that two ways of looking at the same events, but I don't see any contradiction. It's still uncharted territory, a situation where nobody agrees on the objective on the means. Yes, but the specificity is that if the two of us disagree fundamentally on an issue, we disagree on the description of the issue itself, we disagree on the aims to be attained, we disagree on the means, et cetera, et cetera. But at a certain moment, we discover that the two of us are losing control of the situation. And we discover that without understanding exactly what is happening, we could both lose the game. Then we agree at least on one thing. We are on our guards and we understand that we have a common interest, which is precisely to avoid the full loss of control. So this is the sort of my answer to the question. I like the answer. So as you said, have I ever seen in my life a comparable situation? The answer is no. The answer is no, and that takes us back to the question about technology, because I remember very well personally the beginnings of what was not called at the time the digital technologies we did not use, we spoke of informatics and this sort of thing. That was in the 60s, in fact, in the 1960s. Of course, from the scientific viewpoint, we had communication theory and all the basic, the scientific foundations were born earlier. But digital technologies as a new world started more or less in the 60s. Since then, those technologies have accelerated, the technological progress has accelerated constantly. There never was a pause. So if you compare this extraordinary industrial revolution to all the previous industrial revolutions in history, it's totally unprecedented because all the previous revolutions were limited in time, they had huge consequences, but to have 60 years of constant acceleration of technological progress. It continues because the current prediction is that it's very likely the acceleration will accelerate further in the near future. Of course, we had at this conference, we had some presentation of this evolution, but we have that everywhere. In a sense, it is extraordinary, we are very much impressed because it's fantastic, but it is scary too, and that raises another issue which may take us back to religion. That is, what is the capacity of human beings to adapt to constantly accelerating change? Because we are very adaptable animals, the human beings are adaptable animals, but there may be some limits. So that's really unprecedented. And when they say that with the tragedy or other similar technologies, it could develop in a viral way, like a pandemic precisely, it is a serious question. It comes back to the World Knowledge Forum meeting. I mentioned two people, but there were others. One of the questions raised during that meeting was what is the horizon of predictability? And the consensus was that even five years, maybe too long, even five years. Five years? What is it five years? Take elections. We have been discussing fake news and this sort of thing for a number of years, but with tragedy, PT and similar technologies, it will become more and more difficult to separate reality from virtuality. Who tells me that you are not virtual, by the way? We stop here.


We're back, you're watching theCUBE's coverage of Red Hat Summit 2022 here in the Seaport in Boston. I'm Dave Vellante with my co-host, Paul Gillan. Justin Boitano is here. He's the Vice President of Enterprise and Edge Computing at NVIDIA. Maybe you've heard of them. And Tushar Khattarki, who's the Director of Product Management at Red Hat. Gentlemen, welcome to theCUBE. Good to see you. Thank you. Great to be here. Justin, you had keynote this morning. You got interviewed and shared your thoughts on AI. You encouraged people to think bigger on AI. I know it's kind of self-serving, but why? Why should we think bigger? When you think of AI, it's a monumental change that's going to affect every industry. And so when we think of AI, you step back, you're challenging companies to build intelligence and AI factories and factories that can produce intelligence. And so it forces you to rethink how you build data centers, how you build applications. It's a very data-centric process where you're bringing in an exponential amount of data. You have to label that data. You got to train a model. You got to test the model to make sure that it's accurate and delivers business value. Then you push it into production. It's going to generate more data. And you kind of work through that cycle over and over and over. So just as Red Hat talks about CICD of applications, we're talking about CICD of the AI model itself, right? So it becomes a continuous improvement of AI models in production, which is a big business transformation. Yeah, Chris Wright was talking about basically taking your typical application development, pipeline and lifecycle and apply that type of thinking to AI. I was saying those two worlds have to come together actually, the application stack and the data stack, including AI, need to come together. What's the role of Red Hat? What's your sort of posture on AI? Where do you fit with OpenShift? Yeah, so we're very excited about AI. I mean, a lot of our customers obviously are looking to take that data and make meaning out of it. Using AI is definitely a big important tool. And OpenShift and our approach to open a hybrid cloud really forms a successful platform to base all your AI journey on with partners such as NVIDIA, whom we are working very closely with. And so the idea really is, as Justin was saying, the end-to-end when you think about life of a model, you get data, you mine that data, you create models, you deploy it into production, that whole thing, what we call CI CD, as you were saying, DevOps, DevSecOps, and the hybrid cloud that Red has been talking about with OpenShift as the center forms a good basis for that. So, somebody said the other day, I'm going to ask you, is NVIDIA a hardware company or a software company? We're a company that people know for our hardware, but predominantly now we're a software company. And that's what we were on stage talking about. Ultimately, a lot of these customers know that they've got to embark on this journey to apply AI, to transform their business with it. It's such a big competitive advantage going into the next decade. And so the faster they get ahead of it, the more they're going to win, right? But some of them, they're just not really sure how to get going. And so a lot of this is, we want to lower the barrier to entry. We built this program, we call Launchpad, to basically make it so they get instant access to the servers, the AI servers, with OpenShift, with the MLOps tooling, with example applications. And then we walk them through examples like, how do you build a chatbot? How do you build a vision system for quality control? How do you build a price recommendation model? And they can do hands-on labs and walk out of Launchpad with all the software they need, I'll say the blueprint for building their application. They've got a way to have the software and containers supported in production. And they know the blueprint for the infrastructure and operating that at scale with OpenShift. So more and more, to come back to your question, we're focused on the software layers and making that easy to help either enterprises build their apps or work with our ecosystem and developers to buy solutions off the shelf. Now on the hardware side though, I mean, clearly NVIDIA has prospered on the backs of GPUs as the engines of AI development. Is that how it's going to be for the foreseeable future? Will GPUs continue to be core to building and training AI models? Or do you see something more specific to AI workloads? Yeah, I mean, that's a good question. So I think for the next decade, well, plus forever, we're going to always monetize hardware. It's a big market opportunity. Jensen talks about a $100 billion market opportunity for NVIDIA just on hardware. It's probably another $100 billion opportunity on the software. So the reality is we're getting going on the software side, so it's still kind of our early days, but that's a big area of growth for us in the future and we're making big investments in that area. On the hardware side and in the data center, the reality is since Moore's law has ended, acceleration is really the thing that's going to advance all data centers. So I think in the future, every server will have GPUs, every server will have GPUs, and we can talk a bit about what GPUs are. And so there's really kind of three primary processors that have to be there to form the foundation of the enterprise data center in the future. Did you bring up an interesting point about GPUs and MPUs and sort of the variations of GPUs that are coming about? Do you see that those different PU types continuing to proliferate? Oh, absolutely. I mean, we've done a bunch of work with Red Hat and we've got a, I'll say a beta of OpenShift 410 that now supports GPUs as the, I'll call it the control plane, like software-defined networking offload in the data center. So it takes all the software-defined networking off of CPUs. When everybody talks about, I'll call it software-defined networking in core data centers, you can think of that as just a CPU tax up to this point. So what's nice is that's all moving over to GPUs to offload and isolate it from the x86 cores. It increases the security of your data center. It improves the throughput of your data center. And so, yeah, GPUs, we see everybody copying that model. And to give credit where credit is due, I think companies like AWS, they bought Annapurna. They turned it into Nitro, which is the foundation of their data centers. And everybody wants the, I'll call it the democratized version of that to run their data centers. And so every financial institution and bank around the world sees the value of this technology but running in their data center. Everybody needs a Nitro, I've written about it. It's an Annapurna acquisition, $350 million. I mean, peanuts in the grand scheme of things. It's interesting, you said Moore's Law is dead. You know, we have that conversation all the time. Pat Kelsinger promised that Moore's Law is alive and well. But the interesting thing is when you look at the numbers, that's, you know, Moore's Law, we all know it doubling of the transistor densities every 18 to 24 months. Let's say that that promise that he made is true. What I think the industry maybe doesn't appreciate, I'm sure you do, we need an Nvidia. When you combine what you were just saying, the CPU, the GPU, Paul, the NPU, accelerators, all the XPUs, you're talking about, I mean, look at Apple with the M1. I mean, 6X in 15 months versus doubling every 18 to 24. The A15 is probably averaging over the last five years, 110% performance improvement each year versus the historical Moore's Law, which is 40%, it's probably down to the low 30s now. So it's a completely different world that we're entering now, and the new applications are going to be developed on these capabilities. It's just not your general purpose market anymore. From an application development standpoint, what does that mean to the world? Yeah, I mean, yeah, it's a great point.  I mean, they are all very compute intensive, they're data intensive, and to move data for those so much and to compute and crunch those numbers, I mean, I'd say you need all the PUs that you mentioned in the world. And then, and also there are other concerns that will augment that, right? Like, we want to, you know, security is so important, so we want to secure everything. Cryptography is going to take off to new levels, you know, that we are talking about, for example, in the case of deep use, we are talking about, you know, can that be used to offload your encryption and firewalling and so on and so forth. So I think there are a lot of opportunities from even from an application point of view to take advantage of this capacity. So I'd say we've never run out of the need for PUs. So is OpenShift the layer that's going to simplify all that for the developer? That's right, you know, so one of the things that we worked with NVIDIA, and in fact was, we developed this concept of an operator for GPUs, but you can use that pattern for any of the PUs. And so the idea really is that how do you, yeah, it's a new term. Yeah, it's a new term. XPUs. XPUs, yeah. And so that pattern becomes very easy for open GPUs or any other such accelerators to be easily added as a capacity. And for the Kubernetes scheduler to understand that there is that capacity, so that an application which says that I want to run on a GPU, then it becomes very easy for it to run on that GPU. And so that's the abstraction to your point about how we are making that happen. And to add to this, so the operator model, it's this, you know, open source model that does the orchestration. So Kubernetes will say, oh, there's a GPU in that node. Let me run the operator and it installs our entire runtime.   They get installed in that Kubernetes cluster. So instead of somebody trying to chase down all the little pieces and parts, it just happens automatically in seconds. We've extended the operator model to GPUs and networking cards as well. And we have all of those in the operator hub. So for somebody that running OpenShift in their data centers, it's really simple to, you know, turn on node feature discovery. You point to the operators. And when you see new accelerated nodes, the entire runtime's automatically installed for you. So it really makes, you know, GPUs and our networking, our advanced networking capabilities, really first class citizens in the data center. So you can kind of connect the dots and see how NVIDIA and the Red Hat partnership are sort of aiming at the enterprise.  I think Jensen says it's 30%. Probably a better number than I have. But so now you're seeing a lot of new innovation in new hardware devices that are attacking that with alternative processors. And then my question is, what about the edge? Is that a blue field out at the edge? What does that look like to NVIDIA and where does OpenShift play? Yeah, so when we talk about the edge, we're always going to start talking about like which edge are we talking about? Because it's everything outside the core data center. I mean, some of the trends that we see with regard to the edge is, you know, when you get to the far edge, it's single nodes. You don't have the guards, gates and guns protection of the data center. So you start having to worry about physical security with the hardware so you can imagine there's really stringent requirements on protecting the intellectual property of the AI model itself. You spend millions of dollars to build it. If I push that out to an edge data center, how do I make sure that that's fully protected? And that's the area that we just announced a new processor that we call Hopper H100. It supports confidential computing so that you can basically ensure that model's always encrypted in system memory across the PCI bus to the GPU and it's run in a confidential way on the GPU. So you're protecting your data, which is your model, plus the data flowing through it, you know, in transit, while it's stored and then in use. So that really adds to that edge security model. What do they ask you about the cloud? Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems to me that AI workloads have been slower than most to make their way to the cloud. There's a lot of concerns about data transfer capacity and even cost. Do you see that, first of all, do you agree with that? And secondly, is that going to change in the short term? Yeah, so I think there's different classes of problems. So we'll take, there's some companies where their data's generated in the cloud and we see a ton of, I'll say, adoption of AI by cloud service providers, right? Recommendation engines, translation engines, conversational AI services that all the clouds are building, that's all our processors. There's also problems that enterprises have now I'm trying to take some of these automation capabilities but I'm trying to create an intelligent factory where I want to merge kind of AI with the physical world. And that really has to run at the edge because there's too much data being generated by cameras to bring that all the way back into the cloud. So I think we're seeing mass adoption in the cloud today. I think at the edge, a lot of businesses are trying to understand, how do I deploy that reliably and securely and scale it? So I do think there's different problems that are going to run in different places and ultimately we want to help anybody apply AI where their business is generating the data. So obviously very memory intensive applications as well. We've seen you, Nvidia architecturally, kind of move away from the traditional x86 approach, take better advantage of memories where obviously you have relationships with ARM. So you've got a very diverse set of capabilities and then all these other components that come in, it used to just be a kind of x86 centric world and now it's all these other supporting components to support these new applications. How should we think about the future? Yeah, I mean, it's very exciting for sure, right? Like, you know, the future, the data is out there at the edge. The data can be in the data center and so we are trying to weave a hybrid cloud footprint that spans that. I mean, you heard Paul Commyer talk about it, but you know, we've talked about it for some time now. And so the paradigm really is that it beat an application and when I say application, it could be even an AI model as a service. You can think about that as an application. How does an application span that entire paradigm from the core to the edge and beyond where the future is and of course, there's a lot of technical challenges for us to get there and I think that partnerships like this are going to help us and our customers to get there. So the world is very exciting. You know, I'm very bullish on how this will play out. Justin, we'll give you the last word with closing thoughts. Well, you know, I think a lot of this is, like I said, it's how do we reduce the complexity for enterprises to get started, which is why Launchpad is so fundamental. It gives, you know, access to the entire stack instantly with like hands-on curated labs for both IT and data scientists. So they can, again, walk out with the blueprints they need to set this up and, you know, start on a successful AI journey. Just a position, is Launchpad more of a sandbox, more of a train, more of a school or more of an actual development environment? Yeah, think of it as, again, it's really for trial. Like hands-on labs to help people learn all the foundational skills they need to like build an AI practice and get it into production. And again, it's like you don't need to go champion to your executive team that you need access to expensive infrastructure and, you know, and bring in Red Hat to set up OpenShift. You just, everything's there for you, so you can instantly get started. Do kind of a pilot project and then use that to explain to your executive team everything that you need to then go do to get this into production and drive business value for the company. All right, great stuff, guys. Thanks so much for coming to theCUBE. Yeah, thanks, Thomas. Thank you for having us. All right, thank you for watching. Keep it right there, Dave Vellante and Paul Gillin. We'll be back right after this short break at the Red Hat Summit 2022.