Question:
Principle: A spouse is not permitted to put in evidence in any court, any communication during marriage between the spouses without the consent of the person who made the communication.
Facts: X, who is the wife of Y, saw her husband (Y) coming out of the neighbour's house at 6:00 am in the morning. Y told his wife X that he has murdered the neighbour and handed over the jewellery of that neighbour to his wife.
Principle: A spouse is not permitted to put in evidence in any court, any communication during marriage between the spouses without the consent of the person who made the communication.
Facts: X, who is the wife of Y, saw her husband (Y) coming out of the neighbour's house at 6:00 am in the morning. Y told his wife X that he has murdered the neighbour and handed over the jewellery of that neighbour to his wife.
Facts: X, who is the wife of Y, saw her husband (Y) coming out of the neighbour's house at 6:00 am in the morning. Y told his wife X that he has murdered the neighbour and handed over the jewellery of that neighbour to his wife.
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Spousal communications during marriage are generally not admissible in court without the consent of the spouse who made them.
Updated On: Jul 15, 2026
- X is allowed to appear as a witness in court to depose that her husband has told her that he committed a murder
- X is not allowed to appear as a witness at all in any court
- X is not allowed to appear as a witness to depose what was told by the husband to her, however, she can depose what she saw
- X is an independent woman and she can do whatever she wants
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The Correct Option is C
Approach Solution - 1
As per the principle, communication between spouses during the course of their marriage is protected from being used in court without the consent of the person who made the communication. Here, X’s testimony regarding what her husband told her about the murder is protected, as it falls under this category. However, X can testify to what she saw (i.e., observable facts), not to the communication made by her husband. This is consistent with the law that maintains confidentiality of spousal communications during marriage, unless the other spouse consents.
Option (A) is incorrect because spousal communications are protected, and X cannot testify about what was said by her husband. Option (B) is incorrect because X can still testify to what she observed, but not about communications made by her husband. Option (D) is incorrect because X is still bound by the legal protections of marital communication.
Option (A) is incorrect because spousal communications are protected, and X cannot testify about what was said by her husband. Option (B) is incorrect because X can still testify to what she observed, but not about communications made by her husband. Option (D) is incorrect because X is still bound by the legal protections of marital communication.
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Approach Solution -2
This question applies a principle of evidence law: a spouse cannot testify about a communication made during marriage without the consent of the spouse who made it. Let's test each option against the facts, where Y told X (his wife) that he committed the murder, and X separately saw Y coming out of the neighbour's house.
- X is allowed to appear as a witness in court to depose that her husband has told her that he committed a murder: This asks X to repeat what Y said to her in private. That is exactly the kind of marital communication the principle protects, so X cannot be made to reveal it in court without Y's consent. This option is incorrect.
- X is not allowed to appear as a witness at all in any court: The principle only shields communications between spouses, not everything a spouse knows. X still saw Y leaving the neighbour's house with her own eyes, and that observation is not a communication between the spouses at all, so she is free to testify about it. Ruling X out as a witness altogether goes further than the principle allows, so this option is incorrect.
- X is not allowed to appear as a witness to depose what was told by the husband to her, however, she can depose what she saw: This splits the evidence correctly. What Y told X falls inside the marital-communication rule and stays protected, while what X personally saw, Y leaving the house at 6 am, is independent, first-hand observation and is admissible. This tracks the principle precisely.
- X is an independent woman and she can do whatever she wants: Being an independent woman is not a legal category that lets a witness ignore an evidentiary rule. Whether X can testify is governed by the principle stated, not by her personal autonomy, so this option is incorrect.
Only the third option tracks the principle correctly: it protects the confidential communication between Y and X while still allowing X to testify about facts she independently observed.
Therefore, the correct answer is X is not allowed to appear as a witness to depose what was told by the husband to her, however, she can depose what she saw.
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Approach Solution -3
The principle sets out a specific rule of evidence: a spouse cannot be compelled or allowed to disclose in court a communication made to them by the other spouse during the marriage, unless the spouse who made it consents. To apply this correctly, it helps to break the rule into its individual conditions, a statement must (i) have passed from one spouse to the other, (ii) have been made while they were married, and (iii) lack the consent of the spouse who made it, before it becomes protected. Anything that does not meet all three conditions falls outside the rule and is ordinarily admissible. Let's run each option through this checklist.
- X is allowed to appear as a witness in court to depose that her husband has told her that he committed a murder: Y's confession meets all three conditions of the checklist, it passed from Y to X, during their marriage, and Y never consented to its disclosure, so it is squarely protected. Allowing X to repeat it in court would violate the rule, so this option fails the checklist.
- X is not allowed to appear as a witness at all in any court: The checklist only screens out communications that satisfy all three conditions; it says nothing about facts X came to know some other way. What X personally saw, Y leaving the neighbour's house, never passed between the spouses as a communication at all, so condition (i) is never met for that fact, and it remains admissible. Barring X from the witness box entirely fails the checklist by sweeping in evidence the rule never touches.
- X is not allowed to appear as a witness to depose what was told by the husband to her, however, she can depose what she saw: This tracks the checklist exactly: the confession satisfies all three conditions and stays out, while the sighting of Y leaving the house never satisfies condition (i), since it was never communicated by Y to X at all, and so it comes in freely.
- X is an independent woman and she can do whatever she wants: Personal autonomy is not one of the three conditions in the checklist, and it cannot override or replace them. Whether X can testify depends only on whether the specific piece of evidence meets the rule's conditions, not on her independence as a person, so this option fails to engage the checklist at all.
Running the checklist against both pieces of evidence shows the confession is barred while the personal observation is not, which is precisely what the third option describes.
Therefore, the correct answer is X is not allowed to appear as a witness to depose what was told by the husband to her, however, she can depose what she saw.
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Top CLAT Legal Studies Questions
- The Indian legal system places a significant emphasis on protecting the rights and welfare of children. The Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2015, is a vital piece of legislation in this regard. It is designed to ensure that children in conflict with the law receive special care, protection, and treatment, with the ultimate goal of their rehabilitation and reintegration into society.
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The Act makes a clear distinction between a “child in conflict with the law” and a “child in need of care and protection.” A child in conflict with the law is one who has committed an offense, while a child in need of care and protection is a child who is vulnerable or at risk and requires special care and support.
The Act introduces a unique approach to dealing with children who are in conflict with the law. For children between the ages of 16 and 18, who have committed heinous offenses, they can be tried as adults, subject to a preliminary assessment by the Juvenile Justice Board. This assessment considers the child’s mental and physical capacity to commit such an offense. If the board determines that the child should be tried as an adult, the case is transferred to the regular criminal courts.
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Online defamation cases often involve a balancing act between the right to freedom of expression and the right to reputation. The Indian legal system requires a careful examination of the content, context, and intent of the statements to determine whether they qualify as defamatory. Additionally, the plaintiff in an online defamation case must prove that the statement was false, damaging to their reputation, and made with a degree of fault, such as negligence or actual malice. - The Editors Guild of India has expressed concern over the “draconian provisions” of the Press and Registration of Periodicals (PRP) Bill, 2023, that can have an adverse impact on freedom of the press.
The Guild added: “Editors Guild of India would like the proposed bill to ensure that publishing of news in India remains free of encumbrances and intrusive checks on publishers by the Registrar, and that the primary emphasis of the Registrar and the PRP remains ‘registration’ and not ‘regulation’, as the latter has the potential of restricting freedom of the press.”
“In the definitions section, the term ‘specified authority’ gives power to government agencies beyond the Press Registrar, to conduct the functions of the Registrar, which could even include police and other law enforcement agencies. Given the intrusive, expansive, and vague nature of powers that the bill in any case allows to the Press Registrar, the power to further delegate this power to other government agencies including law enforcement agencies is deeply distressing,” the Guild said.
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Security agencies will have significant authority to collect and retain any data whatsoever, as is typically the case with exemptions relating to the maintenance of sovereignty, integrity, security of the state, preservation of public order, prevention of offences, and incitement to commit offences. The law also exempts processing of personal data held outside of India. The government is also exempt from being required to delete any data that it possesses, regardless of the purpose it may have been collected for, on the request of an individual, or by way of a prescribed data retention period.
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Chief Justice Chandrachud said the first step to the inheritance of a child from a void or voidable marriage would be to ascertain the exact share of his parent in the ancestral property. This could be done by means of conducting a “notional partition” of the ancestral property and calculating how much of the property the parent would have got immediately before his death. Once the share of the deceased parent in the property is ascertained through such a notional partition, his heirs, including his children by means of void or voidable marriage, would be entitled to their portions in the share.
The Chief Justice said that Section 16 of the Hindu Marriage Act has statutorily conferred legitimacy to children born out of void or voidable marriages. In fact, Chief Justice Chandrachud pointed out that Section 16(3) stipulates that children from void and voidable marriages would have a right to their parents’ property. The court said the intent of granting legitimacy to such children in the Hindu Marriage Act should also be reflected in the Hindu Succession Act, which governs inheritance. Children from void or voidable marriages come within the ambit of “legitimate kinship” and cannot be regarded as illegitimate by the Hindu Succession Act when it comes to inheritance.
The case before the three-judge Bench was focused on an amended provision in the Hindu Marriage Act, Section 16(3). The case was referred to a larger Bench in 2011 after a Division Bench of the apex court refused to follow past precedents and championed the cause of children born out of illegitimate marriages.
“With changing social norms of legitimacy in every society, including ours, what was illegitimate in the past may be legitimate today. The concept of legitimacy stems from social consensus, in the shaping of which various social groups play a vital role,” Justice Ganguly, who authored the 2011 judgment, had observed.
During the hearings on the reference, Chief Justice Chandrachud had agreed with the Division Bench’s findings that children from void and voidable marriages had rights over the property, whether self-acquired or ancestral, of their parents
[Extracted with edits and revisions from “Children from void, voidable marriages entitled to parents’ share in ancestral property: Supreme Court”, by Krishnadas Rajagopal, The Hindu, https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/children-from-void-voidable-marriages-arelegitimate-can-claim-rights-in-parents-properties-sc/article67259229.ece ]
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The question of justice for the poor is, however, an altogether different challenge. No country in the world has been able to secure justice for the poor. Most of the jails of the richest countries are filled with the poorest. The “masses” are more often victims of the criminal justice system than of crime. In India as well, jails are almost exclusively filled with the poor. The civil justice system is hardly accessible to them. They are often victimised by lawyers, touts and court staff. They are docket-excluded, a new type of untouchability. The language and the logic—and the colonial and feudal culture—of the judicial system are alien to them. It rarely takes cognisance of their needs and interests.
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Centuries hence you will find Indian children brought up to this spot, just as they visit now the Cawnpore Well, and you can imagine the feelings of these Indians for generations over this terrible business.
[Col. Wedgwood, MP, speaking in the British Parliament, 22 December 1919]
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