Confession is weak evidence, says Supreme Court

The Supreme Court has cautioned the judiciary from falling prey to investigation based on the trap of “confession”.

It is a very weak kind of evidence. And it’s a wide spread and rampant practice in the police in India — “use of third-degree methods for extracting confessions from the alleged accused”, a bench of justices Markandey Katju and Gyan Sudha Misra observed, while allowing the appeal by one Arup Bhuyan who had been arrested under Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act (Tada) in 1991 for being an associate of the banned organisation Ulfa.

Bhuyan was convicted by a Tada court in 1997 as the special judge accepted the police’s version that he had confessed his association with the banned organisation.

The police in our country are “unfortunately” not trained in scientific investigation (unlike police in western countries), nor are they provided technical equipments for scientific investigation, the apex court said.

Hence a confession is “procured” by subjecting a suspect to torture, the judges said.

“To obtain a conviction they often rely on the short cut of procuring a confession under torture,” the apex court added.

Damning the practice of torture normally employed by the police, the bench said “it is such a terrible thing that when a person is under torture he will confess to almost any crime”.

“Even Joan of Arc confessed to be a witch under torture,” the judges remarked.The court has relied on a 1996 US court judgment (Clarence Brandenburg Vs State of Ohio). The US Supreme Court had said that mere “advocacy or teaching the duty, necessity, or propriety of violence as a means of accomplishing political or industrial reform… to teach or advocate the doctrines of criminal syndicalism is not per se illegal. It will become illegal only if it incites to imminent lawless action.”