Supreme Court: Dealing with the question relating to admissibility of confessional statement made by an accused under Section 27 of the Evidence Act, 1872, the Court explained the law by stating that Section 25 of the Evidence Act provides that no confession made to a Police Officer shall be proved as against a person accused of any offence. Section 26 provides that no confession made by any person while he is in the custody of a police officer, unless it be made in the immediate presence of a Magistrate, shall be proved as against such person. Section 27 is in the form of a proviso, it lays down how much of an information received from accused may be proved.
The bench of H.L. Dattu, CJ and Arun Mishra, J further explained that for application of section 27 of Evidence Act, admissible portion of confessional statement has to be found as to a fact which were the immediate cause of the discovery and only that would be part of legal evidence and not the rest. In a statement, if something new is discovered or recovered from the accused which was not in the knowledge of the Police before disclosure statement of the accused is recorded, is admissible in the evidence.
Hence, in the present case, where a new discovery of fact was made regarding a co-accused by statements made by the accused persons under Section 27 of the Evidence Act which lead to the nabbing of the co-accused in a case relating to fake currency notes, it was held that such statements which lead to the discovery of facts not in the knowledge of the police, fell under the exception given under Section 27 of the Evidence Act. [Mehboob Ali v. State of Rajasthan, 2015 SCC OnLine SC 1043, decided on 27.10.2015]
