Pandu Rang Kallu Patil v. State of Maharashtra

Sections 25 and 26 of the 1872 Act imposed a complete ban: no confession to a police officer, and no confession made by a person in police custody to anyone other than a Magistrate, could be proved against him. Section 27 then let a narrow shaft of light through that wall. Students routinely treat s. 27 as an independent rule of admissibility, and the answer collapses.

Pandu Rang Kallu Patil states the relationship correctly, and the Adhiniyam has since adopted that very structure: what was a free-standing s. 27 is now the proviso to BSA s. 23(2), sitting inside the prohibition it qualifies.

The case concerned the admissibility of information given by an accused person in police custody which led to the discovery of a fact. The question was whether such information could be proved notwithstanding the bans in ss. 25 and 26.

The Supreme Court held that s. 27 was enacted as a proviso to the provisions of ss. 25 and 26, which imposed a complete ban on the admissibility of any confession made by an accused either to the police or to anyone else while in police custody. That ban would be lifted if the statement is distinctly related to the discovery of facts. The object of s. 27 was to permit a certain portion of a statement made by an accused to a police officer to be admissible in evidence, whether or not that statement is confessional or non-confessional.

The principle. The section rests on the view that if a fact is actually discovered in consequence of the information given, that discovery is itself some guarantee that the information was true, and the information may then safely be given in evidence. Put differently, a confession supported by the discovery of a fact may be presumed to be true and not to have been extracted.

The limit follows from the principle. Because the guarantee comes from the discovery, the extent of the information admissible must depend on the exact nature of the fact discovered to which the information relates. Only so much of the information as relates distinctly to the fact discovered can be proved; the rest is inadmissible.

The conditions. The provision comes into operation only if and when certain facts are deposed to as discovered in consequence of information received from an accused person in police custody, and if the information relates distinctly to the fact discovered. Six requirements are conventionally listed: the fact must have been discovered in consequence of the information; the person giving it must be accused of an offence; he must be in the custody of a police officer; only the portion relating distinctly to the fact discovered may be proved; before the statement is proved somebody must depose that the articles were discovered in consequence of the information; and the fact discovered must be a relevant fact, relating to the commission of the crime in question.

The point Pandu Rang adds. Because the provision operates on information, the confessional or non-confessional character of the statement is irrelevant. This is why s. 27 questions must never be answered by first asking whether the statement was a confession.

Open with the structure: the bar first, the proviso second. Then run the six conditions against the problem facts one at a time, and finish by marking off precisely which words of the statement relate distinctly to what was found — that last step is where most marks are.

Two related authorities are worth a line. In Suresh Chandra Bahri v. State of Bihar the articles recovered at the instance of an accused were neither visible nor accessible but hidden under the ground, no public witness was examined, and the failure of the investigating officer to record the disclosure statement was held not to be fatal, the officer's evidence being free of doubt and the articles duly identified. In State of Maharashtra v. Bharat Bhagan Lal Raghani the display of seized weapons by the police at a press conference was held not to be a ground for disbelieving the factum of recovery.

It does not decide that the information is true, and it does not make the confessional part of the statement admissible for any purpose beyond the discovery.

The numbering trap. In an answer, cite BSA s. 23(2) and its proviso first, with IEA ss. 26 and 27 in brackets. The bar on confessions to a police officer is now BSA s. 23(1) (IEA s. 25).