The Supreme Court in a latest judgment on the evidentiary value of “extra-judicial” confession in criminal cases has held that the admission of the guilt by an accused to any private person cannot be accepted as a sound evidence to convict him unless such a confession stood the real judicial test laid down in the Evidence Act.
“Extra-judicial confession must be established to be true and made voluntarily and in a fit state of mind. The words of the witness (private person) must be clear, unambiguous and clearly convey that accused is the perpetrator of the crime. The extra-judicial confession can be accepted and can be the basis of a conviction if it passes the test of credibility,” a bench of Justices B.S. Chauhan and Swatanter Kumar ruled.
The Supreme Court laid down the law while acquitting S.K. Yusuf from Jamalpur area of West Bengal, awarded life sentence for attempted rape and murder of a 13-year-old girl twelve years ago.
Her body was found buried in the waterlogged fields used by the villagers for catching “jhinga” fish and Yusuf was accused by the police on the ground that he was the last person to be seen in the area from where the body was recovered. However, no body had seen him with the girl, who also had gone to catch the fish in the area.
The police further had charged him of using his spade to kill the girl when he failed in his attempt to rape her. According to the police, the murder was committed to silence the girl as he feared that she would expose him before the fellow villagers.
The police also had claimed that Yusuf had fled from the village after the case was registered and was caught after a week, which showed his guilt.
However, the prosecution case was mainly based on the reported “confession” of the crime by him before two persons from the village, including a maternal uncle of the girl. But the police did not take any pain either to record his confession itself, or before a magistrate, as is required under the law, the apex court said while analysing the evidentiary value of the “extra-judicial” confession.
Holding that the whole case was based on the so called confession of Yusuf to some private persons, the apex court also referred to the post-mortem report, which was “silent” on the attempted sexual assault on the girl.