Nishi Kant Jha v State of Bihar (1968)

An accused often makes a statement that helps and hurts him at once: I was there, but someone else did it. The defence wants the rule to be all-or-nothing — take the whole statement or none of it. If that rule were absolute, the exculpatory half would always ride in with the inculpatory half, and an accused could neutralise his own admission by wrapping it in an improbable story.

This case settles that the all-or-nothing rule is not absolute. The whole statement must be placed before the court, but the court need not believe every part equally. Where the exculpatory part is inherently improbable and contradicted by other evidence, the court may reject it and act on the inculpatory part together with that other evidence. It also explains, and confines, the earlier decisions in Hanumant and Palvinder Kaur that are usually cited for the opposite proposition.

The appellant, a school student at Jhajha, was charged with the murder of a fellow student, Jai Prakash Dubey, and with robbing him, on 12 October 1961. The victim's body was found with the neck cut in the lavatory of a first class compartment of the Barauni-Sealdah passenger when it reached Madhupur.

About an hour before sunset the same day the appellant was seen washing blood-stained clothes with soap in the river Patro, with a cut on his left hand. Villagers and two chowkidars went after him, found him following a bullock cart, and took him first to the Sarpanch and then to the village Mukhiya. At about midnight the Mukhiya took down his statement (Ex. 6), which he signed, before he was handed over to the police the next morning. A knife, blood-stained clothes, books and other articles were found with him; the Chemical Examiner found human blood on them, including on the knife, and the medical evidence was that the victim's injuries could have been caused by that knife.

In Ex. 6 the appellant said he had boarded the first class compartment at Jhajha where an unknown person was sitting; that one Lal Mohan Sharma got in at Simultala, stopped him getting down at Jasidih, took the stranger into the lavatory and killed him; that his own finger was cut by the knife when he tried to catch the assailant's hand; and that after Lal Mohan jumped off the train, he too jumped off near the river Patro, fearing he would be the only person arrested.

At trial, in his statement under s. 342 CrPC, he disowned Ex. 6: he said he had travelled in a different train, was cut in a scuffle with a herdsman, and had been beaten at the Mukhiya's house and made to sign a blank paper.

The Additional Sessions Judge acquitted him. On a Government appeal the Patna High Court convicted him of murder and sentenced him to imprisonment for life. He appealed by special leave.

1. Was the statement recorded by the village Mukhiya before the appellant was handed over to the police admissible, or was it involuntary?
2. If admissible, must the statement be taken as a whole, or may the court reject its exculpatory part and act on the inculpatory part along with the other evidence?

The Court itself framed the stakes: "The evidence against the appellant was all circumstantial and there can be no doubt that if the statement before the Mukhiya is to be left out of consideration, the appellant cannot be held guilty."

The appeal was dismissed and the conviction and sentence were upheld.

On voluntariness

The contention that the statement was not voluntary was rightly rejected. No suggestion had been put to any of the witnesses who took the appellant to the Mukhiya that they had assaulted, coerced or threatened him. And his own story defeated itself: "The appellant's own version that he was made to give his signature on a blank piece of paper cuts at the root of his case that he made a statement as a result of a threat or assault, for in that case, all that was necessary was to get his signature."

On taking the statement as a whole

Counsel argued that a statement containing an admission or confession "must be considered as a whole and the Court is not free to accept one part while rejecting the rest." The Court answered: "In our view, the proposition stated so widely cannot be accepted."

It drew support from English authority. From Taylor's Law of Evidence: though the whole of the statement must be given in evidence, "it does not follow that all the parts of the statement should be regarded as equally deserving of credit". And, on confessions: "The jury may believe that part which charges the prisoner, and reject that which is in his favour, if they see sufficient grounds for so doing." The Court also relied on Roscoe, on Archbold, and on Rex v Clewes, where a prisoner's confession that he was present at a murder committed by another was left to the jury with a direction that they might believe one part and disbelieve another.

Distinguishing Hanumant and Palvinder Kaur

Hanumant v State of Madhya Pradesh had said that an admission "cannot be split up and part of it used against him. An admission must be used either as a whole or not at all." The Court held that "that was not the ratio decidendi in Hanumant's case": there, once the experts' evidence was eliminated, the accused's statement was the only evidence on the point, so part of it could not be relied on leaving out the exculpatory part.

Palvinder Kaur v State of Punjab was explained the same way, through the Full Bench of the Allahabad High Court in Emperor v Balmakund, which the Supreme Court had concurred in. The Full Bench had summarised the authorities as establishing that "where there is other evidence, a portion of the confession may in the light of that evidence, be rejected while acting upon the remainder with the other evidence", and that where there is no other evidence and the exculpatory element is not inherently incredible, the court cannot accept the inculpatory element and reject the exculpatory element. Narain Singh v State of Punjab added nothing further.

Applied to the facts

Here "the exculpatory part of the statement in Ex. 6 is not only inherently improbable but is contradicted by the other evidence." The story that Lal Mohan Sharma kept the appellant on the train as a witness who knew his name, had no apparent motive, and left him alive was unbelievable. The appellant's account of his injury in Ex. 6 was contradicted by his own s. 342 statement, and the skin-deep injury the doctor found fitted neither version nor the quantity of blood on his clothes, books, belt and shoes. The blood-stained knife on his person could have caused the victim's injuries.

So, "there being enough evidence to reject the exculpatory part of the statement of the appellant in Ex. 6 the High Court had acted rightly in accepting the inculpatory part and piecing the same with the other evidence".

The whole of a statement containing an admission or confession must be given in evidence, but the court is not bound to give every part equal credit. Where there is other evidence, and the exculpatory part is inherently improbable and contradicted by that evidence, the court may reject the exculpatory part and act on the inculpatory part together with the other evidence. The rule in Hanumant and Palvinder Kaur — that the court must accept or reject the statement as a whole — applies where the statement is the only evidence on the point and there is nothing to show affirmatively that the exculpatory part is false.

• Direct question: Can a court accept the inculpatory part of a confession and reject the exculpatory part? Discuss with reference to Hanumant, Palvinder Kaur and Nishi Kant Jha. State the general rule (the whole statement must be placed before the court), then the two situations from Balmakund, then this case as the application of the first.
• Problem question: an accused tells a witness he was present but another person struck the blow, and independent evidence contradicts his account of the other person. Apply Nishi Kant Jha: the exculpatory part may be rejected and the admission of presence acted upon with the other evidence.
• Sub-point on voluntariness: use the Court's reasoning that a claim of signing a blank paper undercuts a claim of a coerced statement, and that coercion must be put to the witnesses in cross-examination.
• Cross-reference: note that the statement here was made to a village Mukhiya before the accused was handed over to the police; the only ground of inadmissibility the Court had to deal with was involuntariness.