Prosecution Must Establish That Information Given By Accused Led To Discovery Of Fact For Bringing Case U/S 27 Of Evidence Act: SC

The Supreme Court held that for bringing case under Section 27 of the Indian Evidence Act, 1872 (IEA), the prosecution must establish that information given by an accused led to the discovery of fact.

The Court acquitted persons in a murder case on the ground that the possibility of documents being created to rope in accused persons cannot be ruled out.

The Court was deciding a batch of appeals challenging the judgment of the Chhattisgarh High Court by which the criminal appeals of the accused was dismissed and the order of conviction and sentence was upheld.

The two-Judge Bench comprising Justice B.R. Gavai and Justice Sandeep Mehta observed, "As such, for bringing the case under Section 27 of the Evidence Act, it will be necessary for the prosecution to establish that, based on the information given by the accused while in police custody, it had led to the discovery of the fact, which was distinctly within the knowledge of the maker of the said statement. It is only so much of the information as relates distinctly to the fact thereby discovered would be admissible. It has been held that the rationale behind this provision is that, if a fact is actually discovered in consequence of the information supplied, it affords some guarantee that the information is true and it can therefore be safely allowed to be admitted in evidence as an incriminating factor against the accused." 

Advocate Manish Kumar Saran appeared for the appellant/accused while Dy. AG Praneet Pranav appeared for the respondent/State.

In this case, in the year 2011, a missing person report was lodged by a father after his son (deceased) went missing. While an extensive search was conducted based on the suspicion, the police interrogated the accused persons. During the interrogation, the accused disclosed that they had strangulated the deceased to death on a road and thereafter, thrown his body into a pond at a village.

An FIR was registered and as per the post-mortem report, the cause of death of the deceased was asphyxia due to strangulation and the nature of death was homicidal. The accused hatched a criminal conspiracy to kill the deceased and worked out a plan to execute the same. The Trial Court convicted the accused persons and sentenced all of them to undergo imprisonment for life along with fine. Being aggrieved, they approached the High Court but it dismissed their appeals and hence, they were before the Apex Court.

The Supreme Court in view of the facts and circumstances of the case said, “The evidence of Ramkumar (PW-5) would show that though his statement was taken at Kunda police station, it was signed at Bhatgaon. As such, the possibility of these documents being created to rope in the accused persons cannot be ruled out. In any case, insofar as the statement of Dinesh Chandrakar (accused No. 3) is concerned, even the statement recorded under Section 27 of the Evidence Act is not at all related to the discovery of the dead body of the deceased. As a matter of fact, nothing in his statement recorded under Section 27 of the Evidence Act has led to discovery of any incriminating fact. ... We therefore find that the prosecution has utterly failed to prove that the discovery of the dead body of the deceased from the pond at Bhatgaon was only on the basis of the disclosure statement made by the accused persons under Section 27 of the Evidence Act and that nobody knew about the same before that. It is further to be noted that Ajab Singh (PW-18) has clearly admitted that he had signed the papers without reading them and that too on the instructions of the police.”

The Court noted that the only evidence with regard to recording of the memorandum of accused persons under Section 27 of the Evidence Act, 1872 is concerned, is that of the then Investigating Officer. The prosecution case relied on the circumstance of the memorandum of the accused under Section 27 of the IEA and the subsequent recovery of the dead body from the pond. 

"The prosecution will have to establish that, before the information given by the accused persons on the basis of which the dead body was recovered, nobody had the knowledge about the existence of the dead body at the place from where it was recovered.", it said. 

“It could thus be seen that the IO (PW-16) has failed to state as to what information was given by the accused persons which led to the discovery of the dead body. The evidence is also totally silent as to how the dead body was discovered and subsequently recovered. We find that therefore, the evidence of the IO (PW-16) would also not bring the case at hand under the purview of Section 27 of the Evidence Act”, it added.

The Court concluded that the prosecution utterly failed to prove any of the incriminating circumstances against the appellants and that in any case, the chain of circumstances must be so complete that it leads to no other conclusion than the guilt of the accused persons, which is not so in the case.

Accordingly, the Apex Court allowed the appeals and quashed the judgment of the High Court.

Cause Title- Ravishankar Tandon v. State of Chhattisgarh (Neutral Citation: 2024 INSC 299)

Appearance:

Appellant: AOR Manish Kumar Saran, Advocates Ananya Tyagi, Chandrika Prasad Mishra, Nishi Prabha Singh, U.N. Mishra, Swati Surbhi, Prashasti Singh, Neha Ahlawat, AOR Aswathi M.K., Advocates Chandrika Prasad Mishra, AOR Prashant Kumar Umrao, Advocates Nishi Prabha Singh, Prashasti Singh, Swati Surbhi, V. Ramasubbu, and Mahesh Kumar Tiwari.

Respondent: Dy. AG Praneet Pranav, AOR Prashant Singh, Advocates Prerna Dhall, Piyush Yadav, and Harshvardhan Mall Vishen.

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