India Court Records

Court records will probably mention some of your ancestors as defendants, plaintiffs, jurors, or witnesses. Court records can establish family relationships and places of residence. They often provide occupations, descriptions of individuals, and other family information. They seldom provide birth, marriage, or death information.

Most researchers use court records after they have investigated other records. Court records tend to be difficult to use since few are indexed, the handwriting is hard to read, and they include unfamiliar legal terms. To interpret court records, you may need to consult a dictionary.

The India Office Records maintains records that are arranged in classes according to the departments or agencies that carried out the functions of the India Office and its predecessor institutions. Each class of records has been assigned a place in an alphabetical sequence, and the following paragraphs on this page describe briefly the function of administration and type of records in each class. For each class there is available, in the Asian and African Studies Reading Room, a full list of the records by series. Summary lists of the records in each class are available through this page. To see the summary list of records in any class, go to the section on this page which describes that class of records, and then select again the alphabetical code in the section heading (for example L/P&amp;S).