Relevancy Distinguished from Admissibility — BSA (Law of Evidence) Notes

Relevancy Distinguished from Admissibility

A man confesses his crime to a police officer, and a witness is ready to repeat every word. The confession is obviously connected to the crime — it could hardly be more so. Yet the law forbids the court to hear it. How can a fact be tightly connected to the case and still be shut out? Because “connected” and “allowed” are two different questions — and that gap is the whole of this topic.

Relevancy and admissibility sound alike and students blur them, but they answer different questions.

Relevancy is a question of logic. Is this fact connected to a fact in issue in one of the ways the Act allows (ss. 4 to 50)? It asks: does this fact make the disputed fact more or less probable?
Admissibility is a question of law. Even a logically relevant fact is let in only if no rule of the Act shuts it out. It asks: does the law permit the court to receive this fact?

The governing relationship is a one-way street: all admissible evidence is relevant, but not all relevant evidence is admissible. A fact must first be relevant to have any chance; but relevance alone is not enough, because rules of exclusion (hearsay, privilege, the bar on a police confession) can still keep a relevant fact out.

The classic illustration is the police confession. A confession to a police officer is plainly relevant — it bears directly on guilt. But s. 23(1) BSA [IEA s. 25] makes it inadmissible: the law distrusts confessions extracted in custody, so it bars them however relevant they are. Relevance opens the door; a rule of law slams it shut.

The differences, point by point:

Nature. Relevancy is founded on logic and probability; admissibility on strict rules of law.
Governing sections. Relevancy is decided by ss. 4 to 50; admissibility largely by the later provisions on proof and by the exclusionary rules (hearsay, privilege, ss. 22–24).
The question asked. Relevancy asks “is this fact connected?”; admissibility asks “does the law allow it in?”.
Discretion. The court has some latitude in judging the probative worth (relevancy); it has no discretion to admit what the law declares inadmissible.
Direction of the rule. Relevant facts may or may not be admissible; admissible facts are always relevant.

💡 EXAM TIP — anchor the distinction with the police confession

The trap. Candidates define both terms abstractly and never show the gap between them, so the examiner cannot tell if they actually understand it.

What to write. After the five-point contrast, add one line: “A confession to a police officer is relevant to guilt, yet s. 23(1) BSA makes it inadmissible — proof that relevance is necessary but not sufficient.”

Why it scores. A single concrete example of a relevant-but-inadmissible fact demonstrates the whole point better than a paragraph of theory.

On the relationship: “All admissible evidence is relevant, but all relevant evidence is not admissible; relevancy is the genus, admissibility the species carved out of it by the rules of law.”

In Simple Terms: Relevancy is the bigger circle (logically connected facts). Admissibility is the smaller circle inside it (the connected facts the law actually permits). A fact must be in the big circle to enter; it must also survive the exclusion rules to reach the small one.

flowchart TD
    ROOT["A fact is offered"]:::root
    ROOT --> Q1{"Is it connected to a fact in issue?<br/>(ss. 4-50)"}
    Q1 -->|"No"| OUT["Irrelevant — rejected"]:::diamond
    Q1 -->|"Yes = RELEVANT"| Q2{"Does any rule of law bar it?<br/>(hearsay, privilege, s. 23)"}
    Q2 -->|"Yes"| BAR["Relevant but INADMISSIBLE<br/>(e.g. police confession)"]:::diamond
    Q2 -->|"No"| IN["ADMISSIBLE — received"]:::leaf
    classDef root fill:#FFF8DC,stroke:#000,stroke-width:1px,color:#000;
    classDef leaf fill:#E6F3FF,stroke:#1E3A8A,color:#000;
    classDef diamond fill:#FDECEA,stroke:#B22222,color:#000;
    linkStyle default stroke:#888,stroke-width:1px;

Case Laws

Ram Bihari Yadav vs State of Bihar (1998) — the Supreme Court noted that the terms “relevancy” and “admissibility” are often used interchangeably but are distinct; relevancy is based on logic, admissibility on the strict rules of the Act.

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