The Gauhati High Court acquitted a man after 21 years, citing the insufficiency of an unsigned confession. The Court noted that a confession statement, as per Section 164 of the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC), must be signed by the magistrate who recorded it to be considered valid.
Gauhati: The Gauhati High Court recently determined that an accused cannot be convicted solely on the basis of an unsigned confessional statement, unless additional evidence supports the allegations. This ruling emerged from a rape and murder case in which the only evidence presented to the High Court, a photocopy of a confession statement.
Significantly, this confession statement lacked the signatures of both the accused (appellant) and the magistrate who purportedly recorded it.
A Division Bench of Justices Sanjay Kumar Medhi and Budi Habung observed that an unsigned confession statement, not verified by the magistrate who recorded it, cannot be considered a genuine confession under Section 164 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC).
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The Court noted, subsequently ordering the release of the accused man after 21 years of imprisonment,
“As per 164(4), the confessional statement of the accused person shall be signed by the person making the confession, but in the present case, the accused has not signed the said confessional statement. Non-compliance with provision of section 164 Cr.P.C has caused injury to the accused in his defence on merit and the same cannot be cured at the later stage. In view of the above, we are not in a position to accept the said document to be a true confessional statement of the accused,”
The defendant convicted by a trial court in 2003 for the murder and rape of a woman. For several years, he did not challenge the trial court’s verdict by filing an appeal. However, he later submitted a request to the State government seeking an early release from prison. After the State rejected his request, the defendant filed an appeal with the High Court.
When the case reached the High Court, the records from the original trial court proceedings could not be located. Therefore, the High Court instructed the trial court to reconstruct the case records as much as possible.
The trial court transmitted three key documents to the High Court for review, the first information report (FIR), a purported confession statement, and the trial court’s judgment.
The confession statement provided a photocopy. Importantly, this document lacked the signature of the magistrate who stated to have recorded it.
The appellant also argued that the contents of the confessional statement needed to be proven by the testifying magistrate in order to be used as evidence against the accused. However, in this case, the magistrate not examined, and the confessional statement never proven in the trial court, according to the High Court.
Furthermore, the confession statement did not even contain the signature of the magistrate or the accused. This, the appellant contended, violated the requirements of Section 164 of the Criminal Procedure Code.
The High Court acknowledged the validity of these arguments, stating that the conviction of the accused could not be upheld based solely on an unsigned confessional statement.
The Court further noted that, despite the incomplete original case records, the available documents revealed that the investigation flawed from the outset.
The Court observed,
“There is no record of the confessional statement except the unsigned Xerox copy of the purported confessional statement containing the signature of the Police Court, Phek. That probably was the reason why the Magistrate has not been summoned to prove the said document. The document which has not been signed or proved by the Magistrate, who is purported to have recorded the said confessional statement, cannot be treated as the true confessional statement of the accused under the provisions of section 164 of CrPC,”
The Court observed that although the appellant initially pleaded guilty, the case subsequently went to trial. At that point, the prosecution’s responsibility to prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt, according to the Court’s ruling.
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The Court determined,
“In this instance, the prosecution has utterly failed to establish the case against the accused beyond a reasonable doubt,”
Consequently, the Court overturned the trial court’s decision and ordered the appellant’s release from prison.
Advocate Sentiyanger represented the appellant, while Public Prosecutor K Angami represented the State of Nagaland.