New Delhi: "Extra judicial confession can form the basis of conviction if the persons before whom it is stated to be made appear to be unbiased and [are] not even remotely inimical to the accused," the Supreme Court has held.

A Bench of Justices Arijit Pasayat and D.K. Jain said that while dealing with an extra judicial confession, the court has to be satisfied that it was voluntary and without any coercion and undue influence. Where there was material to show animosity, the court had to proceed cautiously and find out whether confession, just like any other evidence, depended on the veracity of the witness to whom it was made.

The Bench said: "It is not invariably that the Court should not accept such evidence if actual words, as claimed to have been spoken, are not reproduced and the substance is given. It will depend on the circumstance of the case.

"If substance itself is sufficient to prove culpability and there is no ambiguity about the import of the statement made by the accused, evidence can be acted upon even though substance and not actual words have been stated."

The Court said: "The human mind is not a tape recorder, which records what has been spoken word by word. The witness should be able to say as nearly as possible actual words spoken by the accused. That will rule out the possibility of erroneous interpretation of any ambiguous statement. If word-by-word repetition of statement of the case is insisted upon, more often than not evidentiary value of extra judicial confession has to be thrown out as unreliable and not useful.

"That cannot be a requirement in law. There can be some persons who have a good memory and may be able to repost exact words and there may be many who possess normal memory and do so."

The apex court's observations came in the case of an appeal from Ajay Singh against a judgment of the Nagpur Bench of the Bombay High Court. The High Court had confirmed his life sentence, ordered by the trial court, for murdering his wife Latabai on April 29, 2003 relying on extra judicial confession made by the accused to a couple.

Mr. Justice Pasayat said though conviction could be based on extra judicial confession, in this case, as the couple who gave evidence had previous animosity towards the accused, their evidence could not be relied upon.

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail