When a 164 CrPC Crumbles Under Investigation

I went for Internship at a law firm last semester and saw how a real case was handled. One thing that was really interesting was that during the cross-examination, the defence counsel used a recorded statement of the eye-witness under 162 CrPC, and then in re-examination, the prosecution countered that the whole recording was tampered with by a third person. Then it hit me – that was Section 191 IPC (Giving false evidence), not 192 (Fabrication of false evidence) which my textbooks always mentioned. But the key point was that the prosecution also used the 'Statement of a witness under section 32(1) of the Indian Evidence Act, 1872' which states that when a witness deposes to a fact which forms part of a civil document, and the document is duly proved, then the contents of that document can be proved by merely referring to it.