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Civil Proceedings Evidence Act, 1965 (Act No. 25 of 1965)

Part VII : Oaths and Affirmations

41. When unsworn or unaffirmed testimony admissible

 

(1) Any person who, from ignorance arising from youth, defective education or other cause, is found not to understand the nature or to recognize the religious obligation of an oath or affirmation, may be permitted to give evidence in any civil proceedings without being upon oath or affirmation, if, before any such person proceeds to give evidence, the person presiding at the proceedings in which he is called as a witness, admonishes him to speak the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth and administers or causes to be administered to him any form of admonition which appears, either from his own statement or from any other source of information, to be calculated to impress his mind and bind his conscience, and which is not, as being of an inhuman, immoral or irreligious nature, obviously unfit to be administered.

 

(2) Any person to whom an admonition has been administered as aforesaid, who in evidence wilfully and falsely states anything which, if sworn, would have amounted to the offence of perjury or any statutory offence punishable as perjury, shall be deemed to have committed that offence, and shall upon conviction be liable to such punishment as is by law provided as a punishment for that offence.