Confessional Statement given by an Accused before a Police Officer is Inadmissible as Evidence: Supreme Court
The Supreme Court reiterated that a confessional statement given by an accused before a Police officer is inadmissible as evidence.
Background
The appellants have challenged the judgment and order passed by the High Court of Karnataka in a Criminal Appeal which has upheld the order of conviction and sentence passed by the Trial Court against the appellants which convicted the appellants under Section 302 read with Section 34 IPC, and has sentenced them for life imprisonment.
Decision
The three judges bench of The Chief Justice of India Uday Umesh Lalit, Justice S. Ravindra Bhat and Justice Sudhanshu Dhulia observed that it is a case of circumstantial evidence and in a case of circumstantial evidence, the entire chain of evidence must be complete and the conclusions which is arrived after examining the chain of evidence must point towards the culpability of the accused and to no other conclusion.
The bench noted that this, however, is clearly missing from the case of the prosecution. The entire case of the prosecution is based on the so-called confessional statements or voluntary statements given by accused (all the present appellants) while they were in police custody.
“In a case of circumstantial evidence, the Court has to scrutinize each and every circumstantial possibility, which is placed before it in the form of an evidence and the evidence must point towards only one conclusion, which is the guilt of the accused” the court said.
The court added that it has become necessary to interfere with the findings for the reasons that both the High Court as well as the Sessions Court have ignored the well-established principles of criminal jurisprudences and have relied upon facts and evidences which are clearly inadmissible in a court of law.
The court set aside the order of the Sessions Judge and the High Court and ordered that the appellants shall be released from jail, unless they are wanted in some other crime.
Case title: Munikrishna @ Krishna etc. v/s State by Ulsoor ps
Citation: Criminal appeal nos.1597-1600 of 2022
