Uttering To Oneself Or Someone Can Be Termed As Confession: SC

Uttering To Oneself Or Someone Can Be Termed As Confession: SC 22 Jan 2009, 2115 hrs IST, PTI NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court has observed that in extra-judicial confessions a written note by an accused or even a casual statement uttered by him to himself and overheard by a third person can be the basis for his conviction. "An accused might have been over-heard uttering to himself or saying to his wife or any other person in confidence. He might have also uttered something in soliloquy. He might also keep a note in writing. All the aforesaid nevertheless constitute a statement. "Such a statement is an admission of guilt, it would amount to a confession whether it is communicated to another (person) or not," a bench of Justices Arijit Pasayat and Ashok Kumar Ganguly observed. The apex court passed the observation while rejecting the appeal of Shiv Karam Payaswami Tewari sentenced to life imprisonment in a murder case. Tewari while working in a hotel in Mumbai had murdered his manager Muttukumar after a fight. He was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment by the sessions court on the basis of a supposedly self-incriminating statement made by the accused to a friend which was treated as an extra-judicial confession to convict him. The sentence was affirmed by the Bombay High Court upon which he appealed in the apex court. In the appeal before the apex court, Tewari took the plea that his purported extra-judicial confession has no evidentiary value and hence the conviction was unsustainable.

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