New Delhi, Jul 23 (PTI) With the Bombay High Court verdict in the 2006 Mumbai train bomb blasts case discarding confessions of the accused persons for multiple reasons, legal experts say the relevant law “has not changed at all” over the years.
One of the key grounds for rejecting the confessional statements in the blasts case was because the court found these statements were “identical and appear to have been copied”.
Senior advocate Amit Desai said appreciation of evidence is a question of fact where one court analyses it one way and another court another way.
“However, the legal principle on confessions has not changed at all. The legal principle is that a confession, a person can be convicted on his own confession provided the confession is voluntary and not obtained by any form of coercion, inducement or undue influence,” he told PTI.
Calling it a “shocking finding”, a Bombay High Court bench of Justices Anil Kilor and Shyam Chandak said, “Upon examining the relevant portion related to bomb blasts of each of the confessional statements, we were surprised to find that certain portions of these statements are identical and appear to have been copied.” The bench on July 21 acquitted all the 12 convicts, saying the prosecution utterly failed to prove the case and it was “hard to believe the accused committed the crime”.
Of the 12, five were on death row and seven had been sentenced to life imprisonment by the trial court. One death row convict died in 2021.
The Maharashtra government rushed to the top court a day after the high court’s verdict.
Seven blasts ripped through Mumbai local trains at various locations on the western line on July 11, 2006, killing over 180 people.
Desai said courts very often say that when you rely on a confession and you want to convict a person only on the base of confession, one ought to examine other circumstances to lend what they call “assurance to the confession”.
Therefore, he said, when the high court appreciated the evidence in the Mumbai blasts case, aside from the facts and the testimony of the witnesses and the cross-examination of witnesses, the conclusion was vastly different from that of the trial court.
Desai argued in a death penalty case, there is a “strict appreciation” of evidence since the burden of proof is on the prosecution, making the analysis of the evidence “far more critical and strict”.
“Therefore, depending on what the facts are; what the cross-examination of witnesses is; what the totality of circumstances are, the high court has felt that there is some doubt about the manner in which the confessions have been secured and as a result the confessions are not voluntary,” he added.
Senior advocate Sidharth Luthra pointed out even in the context of identical witness statements courts have since long commented adversely on “parrot like statements”.
He referred to a 1984 judgment of the Supreme Court which found it impossible to believe that all witnesses spoke in the same language and used the same words.
“That principle applies equally to accused confessional statements,” Luthra said.
Notably, it came on record that 11 accused persons in the Mumbai train blasts case gave confessional statements and then retracted their statements before the court in 2006.
“Earlier the retraction, better it is as per the settled law in order to rule out the argument that the retractions has been made as an after-thought,” explained advocate Dhruv Gupta.
He referred to the top court’s decision in Puran v. State of Punjab in 1952, holding that a conviction on the basis of a retracted confession should be avoided, unless such a retracted confession is corroborated by relevant evidence which supports the material particulars of the confession.
Similarly, in the landmark Parliament attack case verdict, the Supreme Court in 2005 dealt with various aspects over retracted confessions in detail and held courts must consider the reasons for making confessions as well as the retractions.
The two aspects were to be kept in mind to determine whether the confession was voluntary or under threat and courts were asked to generally not rely on retracted confessions, unless corroborated in material particulars.
“Retracted confessions are considered with some suspicion, and can only be relied upon when it appears that the confession was made voluntarily and that there is sufficient material to corroborate the material particulars of the retracted confession,” Gupta said.
Most recently, the Supreme Court discussed in detail the legal provisions dealing with credibility and validity of confessional statements in the Krishna Mohan Reddy case.
The matter was over the grant of anticipatory bail. Though the top court refused grant the relief, it also deliberated on the accusations of “third-degree” torture — an allegation central to the arguments of Mumbai blasts convicts — in the case.
On May 16, a top court bench of Justices J B Pardiwala and R Mahadevan made it “very clear” that the investigating agency should not adopt any “third-degree methods” or “coerce or exert any undue pressure or bring any undue influence on any of the witnesses or any of the co-accused to make statements that may suit the state”.
“Tomorrow, if any complaint is made before the court in this context with some cogent material, be it the trial court or the high court or the Supreme Court, the same shall be viewed very seriously,” the court underlined while expecting the investigating agency to carry out a “fair, impartial and transparent” probe, more particularly, in “accordance with law”.
The high court examined evidence, including confessional statements, under the provisions of the Indian Evidence Act. More particularly, Sections 24 to 30 of the Evidence Act, deal with the relevancy and admissibility of confessions as evidence.
The acquittal verdict also found it “abundantly clear” that at the crucial stage of recording confession, the accused were not made aware of their right to have services of lawyer.
“Thus, the valuable right of the accused to have services of lawyer has been denied to the accused in the present matter,” it said.
Senior advocate Vikas Pahwa said central to the acquittal was the unreliability of the confessional statements recorded by senior police officers of the police, which the high court found to be tainted by coercion, custodial torture, and inhuman treatment, which was substantiated by medical records of some of the accused persons.
“The court rightly observed that such statements, when extracted in violation of the accused’s rights under Article 20(3) of the Constitution and Section 24 of the Indian Evidence Act, and unsupported by independent corroboration, cannot form the basis of a lawful conviction,” Pahwa said. PTI AMK ZMN
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