Almost every dispute now arrives with a folder of screenshots. Clients produce them expecting the case to end there, and are surprised when the other side simply says the messages are fabricated — and the court agrees that a screenshot, standing alone, proves very little.
Digital messages are admissible in Pakistan. But there is a difference between material a court will look at and material a court will rely on, and the gap between the two is almost entirely about how the evidence was collected and who can vouch for it.
The law that makes it admissible
The Qanun-e-Shahadat Order, 1984 is broad enough to accommodate electronic material. Article 2(1)(e) defines a document to include information recorded or produced by modern devices; Article 73 deals with documents produced by such devices as primary evidence; and Article 78-A provides for proof of electronic documents and the manner of their authentication.
The Electronic Transactions Ordinance, 2002 reinforces this: electronic records and signatures are not to be denied legal effect merely because they are electronic.
Separately, the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act, 2016 governs how an investigating agency lawfully obtains and preserves electronic evidence — sections 32 and 33 on retention and preservation, and the provisions on search, seizure and forensic examination of a device.
Why a screenshot alone fails
A screenshot is trivially easy to fabricate, and courts know it. Standing on its own it invites three questions nobody can answer from the image itself: is this genuine, is it complete, and who sent it?
Three problems recur:
- No source device. The image exists; the phone it came from does not, or is not produced.
- Selective extraction. Four messages from a conversation of four hundred, chosen by the party relying on them. The other side then produces the surrounding messages and the meaning inverts.
- No attribution. A number is not a person. Proving that this number was used by this defendant is a separate exercise.
What actually stands up
- Produce the device. The original phone, with the conversation live on it, available for the court and the other side to see. This is the single strongest thing you can do.
- Export the full chat, not screenshots. WhatsApp's own export produces a continuous, timestamped record. Export the complete conversation, including everything unhelpful to you — a complete record is credible in a way a curated one is not.
- Preserve the phone. Do not factory reset it, change the number, delete anything, or "clean up" the chat. Once altered, the evidence is contaminated and the other side will say so.
- Get a forensic report where the amount at stake justifies it. An extraction by a recognised forensic examiner, with a hash of the image and a chain of custody, converts contested material into proved material.
- Prove attribution. The number in the other party's own correspondence, on their letterhead, in their contract, on their business card, in their CNIC-linked SIM record. Or their own admission that the number is theirs.
- Corroborate. A payment that matches what the message promised. A delivery that matches the address sent. A witness who was present. Digital evidence is at its strongest when it confirms something independent.
How this differs by case
In a criminal case the evidence is normally collected by the investigating agency under PECA's procedure, and the defence attacks the chain of custody and the manner of seizure. A phone taken without authority, or handled by five people before it reached the examiner, is an opening.
In a civil or family case the party produces the material themselves, and the burden of proving authenticity sits squarely on them. This is where produced devices and complete exports matter most — for example in maintenance, harassment and dissolution proceedings, where messages are often the only record of what was said.
The evidence you must not create
Two warnings, because both are common and both backfire.
Do not record a call without care. The lawfulness and admissibility of a covert recording is contested, and a recording obtained by unlawful interception can create a problem for you rather than for the other side.
Do not fabricate or edit. Producing a doctored message is not merely a lost point. It is an offence, and once a court finds one item was manipulated, everything else you produced dies with it.
A practical checklist
- Export the full conversation, with timestamps, as soon as the dispute arises.
- Back it up somewhere you will not lose it, and keep the original device untouched.
- Note the number, and gather independent proof of who uses it.
- Record who else saw the messages when they arrived.
- Where the material is central and the stakes are high, budget for a forensic extraction rather than relying on the phone alone.
This article describes general principles of electronic evidence in Pakistan and is not advice on any particular case. Admissibility and weight turn on the facts, on how the material was obtained and on the forum. Consult an advocate before producing digital material, and preserve the original device untouched in the meantime.