Legal Dictionary of Pakistan

circumstantial evidence

1. Evidence based on inference and not on personal knowledge or observation. - Also termed indirect evidence; oblique evidence. Cf direct evidence (1). 2. All evidence that is not given by testimony. "Indirect evidence (called by the civilians, oblique, and more commonly known as circumstantial evidence) is that which is applied to the principal fact, indirectly, or through the medium of other facts, by establishing certain circumstances or minor facts, already described as evidentiary, from which the principal fact is extracted and gathered by a process of special inference ...." Alexander M. Burrill, A Treatise on the Nature, Principles and Rules of Circumstantial Evidence 4 (1868).