'No confession made to a police officer is admissible.' Explain. State the exception to the rule that confession by an accused in police custody is not admissible in evidence. 'It looks rather strange that a confession made by an accused even before a sweeper will be admissible, but it will not be so when made before a high ranking police officer like Inspector General of Police.' Examine critically.

The Rule: No Confession to a Police Officer is Admissible

The Statutory Foundation

Section 25 of the Indian Evidence Act, 1872 (now Section 23(1) of the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam, 2023) states in plain and unequivocal language: "No confession made to a police officer shall be proved as against a person accused of any offence." The language of this provision is remarkable for its brevity and absoluteness. Unlike Section 24, which requires the court to evaluate a host of ingredients — inducement, threat, promise, person in authority, temporal advantage — before excluding a confession, Section 25 admits of no qualification, no exception, and no condition. If the confession is made to a police officer, it is out. Period.

The companion provision, Section 26 of the IEA (now Section 23(2) of the BSA, 2023), extends this exclusionary net even further: "No confession made by any person while he is in the custody of a police officer, unless it is made in the immediate presence of a Magistrate, shall be proved against him." This means that even if the accused makes a confession to a private person — a friend, a doctor, or a neighbour — while he remains under police surveillance, that confession too is barred, unless a Magistrate is immediately present and the confession is duly recorded by that Magistrate under the procedure laid down in Section 164 of the CrPC, 1973 (now Section 183 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023).

The Rationale: Why Such an Absolute Rule?

The severity of this rule becomes intelligible only when one understands its historical and jurisprudential roots. Sir James Fitzjames Stephen himself, who drafted the Evidence Act, candidly explained the reasoning. He recorded an anecdote from the deliberations on the Indian Code of Criminal Procedure in 1872, where an experienced civil officer observed: "There is a great deal of laziness in it. It is far pleasanter to sit comfortably in the shade rubbing red pepper into a poor devil's eyes than to go about in the sun hunting up evidence." Stephen found the observation shocking but accurate. The provisions of Sections 25 and 26 were inserted precisely to end the practice of torture by the police for the purpose of extracting confessions.

The Supreme Court gave the most authoritative judicial expression to this rationale in Kartar Singh v. State of Punjab (1994 3 SCC 569), where K. Ramaswamy J. explained that the fascicle of sections 24 to 30 "aim to zealously protect the accused against becoming the victim of his own delusion or the mechanisation of others to self-incriminate in crime." The court held that the custody of a police officer provides easy opportunities for coercion for extracting confessions, and Section 25 rests upon the principle that "it is dangerous to depend upon a confession made to a police officer which cannot extricate itself from the suspicion that it might have been produced by the exercise of coercion." The legislative policy is that involuntariness is not proved — it is presumed — whenever a confession is made to the police.

Justice Goswami of the Supreme Court captured the mischief in vivid terms in Dagdu v. State of Maharashtra (1977 3 SCC 68): "The archaic attempts to secure confessions by hook or by crook seems to be the be-all and end-all of the police investigation. The police should remember that confession may not always be a short-cut to solution. Instead of trying to start from a confession, they should try to arrive at it. Else, when they are busy on their short route to success, good evidence may disappear due to inattention to the real clues."

The exclusion under Section 25 is, thus, a double presumption: first, that a confession to the police is involuntary; and second, that an involuntary confession is untrue and therefore unsafe for courts to rely upon.

Scope and Amplitude of Section 25

Several consequences flow from the absolute nature of Section 25 that must be clearly understood.

The exclusion applies regardless of whether the accused was formally in custody. In Bheru Singh v. State of Rajasthan (1994 2 SCC 467), the Supreme Court held that Section 25 bars even a confession made to a police officer before investigation had begun, and even before the person had been formally accused. The expression "accused of any offence" covers an accused who has been put on trial, whether or not he was under arrest or in custody when he made the confession.

A confessional First Information Report is equally excluded. If the FIR lodged by the accused himself contains a confessional statement, it is inadmissible under Section 25. It cannot be used against him either directly or indirectly in any manner. In Bheru Singh, the Supreme Court held that Section 25 bars not only the admission of the offence itself but also all incriminating facts relating to the commission of the offence stated to the police. The confessional FIR cannot be used against the accused or against any co-accused implicated in it.

A confession contained in a letter addressed to a police officer but written outside his presence is, however, admissible. In Sita Ram v. State of UP (AIR 1966 SC 1906), the Supreme Court held that such a letter is not a confession "made to" a police officer in the sense contemplated by Section 25, as the accused was not physically in the presence of the officer when he wrote and signed the letter.

The bar of Section 25 does not apply to departmental proceedings, where the provisions of the Evidence Act do not strictly apply.

Who is a "Police Officer" Under Section 25?

The term "police officer" is not defined in the Evidence Act, but the Supreme Court in Raja Ram v. State of Bihar (AIR 1964 SC 828) laid down the governing test: whether the powers conferred on the officer establish "a direct or substantial relationship with the prohibition enacted by this section, that is, relating to the recording of a confession." Applying this test, the courts have reached the following positions, which are illuminating:

The Exception: Section 27 — Discovery of Fact

The Operative Provision

The only true exception to the twin prohibitions of Sections 25 and 26 is carved out by Section 27 of the IEA (now the proviso to Section 23 of the BSA, 2023), which provides:

"Provided that when any fact is deposed to as discovered in consequence of information received from a person accused of any offence, in the custody of a police officer, so much of such information, whether it amounts to a confession or not, as relates distinctly to the fact thereby discovered, may be proved."

This proviso is founded on what the Supreme Court in State of Maharashtra v. Damu Gopinath Shinde (AIR 2000 SC 1691) called the doctrine of confirmation by subsequent events: "The doctrine is founded on the principle that if any fact is discovered in a search made on the strength of any information obtained from a prisoner, such a discovery is a guarantee that the information supplied by the prisoner is true." In simple terms: if the accused says "the knife is buried under the Peepal tree in my courtyard" and the knife is indeed found there, that discovery guarantees the truth of the statement to that limited extent, removing the taint of coercion.

The Conditions for Section 27 to Apply

For Section 27 to operate, four conditions must be satisfied:

1. A fact must have been deposed to as discovered in consequence of the information.

2. The information must have been received from a person accused of an offence.

3. The accused must have been in custody of a police officer at the time of giving the information.

4. The information must relate distinctly to the fact discovered — not to the broader history of the crime.

What is Admissible Under Section 27

The Privy Council gave the definitive statement in Pulukuri Kottaya v. Emperor (AIR 1947 PC 67), which remains the leading authority: "Information supplied by a person in custody that 'I will produce a knife concealed in the roof of my house' does not lead to the discovery of a knife. It leads to the discovery of the fact that a knife is concealed in the house of the informant to his knowledge. But if to the statement the words be added 'with which I stabbed A', these words are inadmissible since they do not relate to the discovery of the knife in the house of the informant."

This illustration captures the limitation of Section 27 with surgical precision. What is admissible is the minimal part of the statement that is the immediate and proximate cause of the discovery of the relevant fact. The rest — particularly the part that connects the discovered object with the crime itself — remains inadmissible. The discovery is merely one link in the chain of proof; the other links must be established by evidence gathered through lawful means.

Other Situations Where Confession is Admissible Despite Police Connection

In addition to Section 27, the following situations deserve mention:

• Magistrate's presence under Section 26: A confession made by an accused while in police custody in the immediate presence of a Judicial Magistrate and duly recorded under Section 164 CrPC is admissible. The Magistrate must be a Judicial Magistrate — not an Executive Magistrate or Tehsildar — as held by the Gauhati High Court in State of Assam v. Anupam Das (2008 Cr LJ 1276), affirmed in Kartik Chakraborty v. State of Assam (2017).

• Removal of the taint under Section 28 of IEA (Section 22, First Proviso, BSA): If the accused was subjected to inducement, threat, or promise but that impression is fully removed, any subsequent confession becomes admissible. The removal must be complete and established by circumstances — lapse of time, intervention by a superior officer, or independent counselling.

• Special statutes like TADA and POTA: Section 15 of TADA (1987) and Section 32 of POTA (2002) permitted police officers above the rank of Superintendent of Police to record confessions and these were made admissible as exceptions to Sections 25 and 26 of the IEA. However, the courts were cautious. In Arup Bhuyan v. State of Assam (2011 3 SCC 377), the Supreme Court warned: "Even Joan of Arc confessed to be a witch under torture. Hence, where the prosecution case mainly rests on the confessional statement made to the police by the alleged accused, in the absence of corroborative material, the courts must be hesitant before they accept such extra-judicial confessional statements."

The Paradox of the Sweeper and the Inspector General of Police

Stating the Paradox

The proposition that the question asks the student to examine is a time-honoured one in the law of evidence. It can be stated thus: if a completely free and voluntary confession is made to a village sweeper, it is admissible as an extra-judicial confession. But if the very same confession — equally free and equally voluntary — is made to an Inspector General of Police, it is inadmissible under Section 25. The apparent anomaly is that rank and probity of the officer are irrelevant; the bar operates regardless of whether the officer is a constable or a Director General of Police.

The observation captures a genuine tension in the law, and it has troubled judges, law reformers, and commentators alike. Justice Mack, in Re Mottai Thevar (AIR 1952 Mad. 586), gave it the most articulate judicial expression: "I should like to give expression for what it is worth to the view, which I have had for some time, that the distrust and apprehensions of the police founded on conditions of lack of education, character and integrity amongst the subordinate police in 1872 do not exist today, at any rate in the same degree, and that the time has come for a modification of these three sections... The removal of these shackles from police testimony is necessary if they are to be evolved into a responsible force, deserving of the confidence of the public, the Bar and the Courts."

The Defence of the Rule

Despite the apparent logical incongruity, there are powerful arguments in defence of the absolute rule of Section 25, and the Law Commission's ultimate decision to retain it in its 185th Report deserves careful attention.

First, the rationale of Section 25 is not merely individual coercion in a given case — it is a systemic protection. The presumption that a confession to the police is involuntary is a legislative presumption that reflects the overall and historically documented pattern of police behaviour, not merely the character of any individual officer. As the Supreme Court observed in Bheru Singh v. State of Rajasthan (1994 2 SCC 467), "the inadmissibility of a confessional statement made to a police officer under Section 25 is based on the ground of public policy."

Second, an individual's fear of the police is not simply a function of the rank of the officer. The psychological pressure exercised by the police over a suspect in custody does not diminish because it is the Inspector General and not the constable who is conducting the interrogation. A man in custody is not less afraid because the person holding power over him has more gold braid on his shoulder. In Kartar Singh, K. Ramaswamy J. pointed out that "a Sub-Inspector of the Police may be uncouth in his approach and harsh in his behaviour as compared to a Superintendent of Police or Additional Superintendent of Police or any higher officer. But the basic philosophy of the two remains the same."

Third, as the Law Commission of India observed in its 185th Report — referring back to the very first Report of the Law Commission which had recommended the original provisions — "What the First Report of the Law Commission said more than 150 years ago holds good today and, in fact, the situation has vastly deteriorated." The 185th Report went so far as to say, in emphasis: "The day all confessions to police, in all types of offences other than those relating to a few specified categories like confessions by terrorists to senior police officers is permitted and becomes the law, that will be the day of the demise of liberty."

Fourth, from a purely practical standpoint, the rule also serves the salutary purpose of encouraging the police to build their case properly. As Justice Goswami observed, once a confession is obtained, there is a "flagging zeal for a full and thorough investigation." The exclusionary rule, paradoxically, improves the quality of police investigation by depriving them of the shortcut of the confession and compelling them to collect independent evidence.

The Critical Assessment

That said, the paradox does expose a genuine deficiency in the rule as it operates in practice. The Law Commission of India, in its 14th Report, had in fact recommended that confessions made to police officers above the rank of Deputy Superintendent be treated as admissible. The 69th Report went further and proposed a new Section 26A to make such confessions admissible under safeguards similar to those of Section 164 CrPC. The National Police Commission in its Fourth Report of June 1980 also argued for a partial lifting of the ban so that confessions to senior officers could enter the evidentiary record at least as material considered by the court. None of these proposals have been implemented.

The BSA, 2023 reproduces the substance of Sections 25, 26, and 27 in Section 23, without any structural reform. The legislature has thus reiterated its confidence in the absolute ban, notwithstanding generations of criticism.

A student of the law can reasonably take the position that the better approach would be to replace the absolute bar with a supervisory mechanism: confessions to senior officers above a specified rank, given in the presence of a Magistrate or independent officer, subject to video-recording and a mandatory warning procedure, could be made admissible — not because senior officers are inherently trustworthy but because the procedural safeguards, and not the officer's rank, guarantee voluntariness. This is, broadly, the approach taken by Section 76 of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act, 1984 of England — a provision that permits police to adduce confession evidence but gives the court a wide discretion to exclude it whenever it has reason to doubt its voluntariness. The genius of the English approach is that it addresses the function of the safeguard — guaranteeing voluntariness — rather than rigidly identifying the person to whom the confession must not be made.

Until such legislative reform comes about, however, the rule remains absolute and applies to every police officer, whether a village chowkidar or a Director General of Police, in precisely equal measure. The paradox is real, but the policy choice is deliberate — and, in the conditions of Indian policing, it is arguably the least bad option available.