Palvinder Kaur v. State of Punjab

Supreme Court of India · 22 October 1952 · 3 judges · 1952 AIR 354; 1952 SCR 94

The Court acquitted the appellant under Section 201 IPC, holding that her wholly exculpatory statement was not a confession and was inadmissible, that a confession cannot be accepted in part, and that no offence causing death was proved.

Facts

The appellant was tried for murder and for causing disappearance of evidence after her husband's body was found in a trunk thrown into a well. The prosecution case was that he had been poisoned with potassium cyanide and the body concealed and disposed of. The Sessions Judge convicted her of murder. The High Court acquitted her of murder but convicted her under Section 201 IPC, treating her retracted statement to a magistrate, which said that her husband had died after taking a chemical by mistake and that she had helped hide and dispose of the body, as the most important evidence. The High Court accepted the part about disposal of the body and rejected the part about accidental death. She appealed by special leave.

Questions before the Court

Is a statement that is wholly exculpatory, though it admits incriminating facts, a confession admissible against the accused?
Can a court accept the inculpatory part of a confession and reject the exculpatory part as false?
What must the prosecution prove to establish an offence under Section 201 IPC?

What the Court held

A confession must admit in terms the offence, or at least substantially all the facts constituting it. A statement containing exculpatory matter which, if true, would negative the offence is not a confession. The appellant's statement, which described an accidental death, was not a confession and was inadmissible to prove her guilt.
A confession or admission must be accepted or rejected as a whole. The court cannot accept the inculpatory part and reject the exculpatory part as inherently incredible when there is no other evidence showing that part to be false.
Section 201 IPC requires proof that an offence was in fact committed, not mere suspicion, and that the accused, knowing or having reason to believe this, caused evidence of it to disappear to screen the offender.
The medical evidence did not show death by potassium cyanide, and once the statement was excluded there was no proof that death resulted from an offence. Suspicion, however strong, cannot found a conviction. The conviction under Section 201 was set aside and the appellant acquitted.

Why it matters

The judgment applies the Privy Council's definition of a confession to hold that a self-exculpatory statement is not a confession, and lays down that a confession must be accepted or rejected as a whole rather than split into believed and disbelieved parts. It also holds that a conviction under Section 201 IPC needs proof that an offence was actually committed, and warns courts against resting conclusions in circumstantial cases on suspicion.

In the Court's words

Copied from the official judgment; each passage links to its page.

“The statement not being a confession and being of an exculpatory nature in which the guilt had been denied by the prisoner, it could not be used as evidence in the case to prove her guilt.”

Mahajan, J.Page 8 of the judgment

“The court thus accepted the inculpatory part of that statement and rejected the exculpatory part. In doing so it contravened the well accepted rule regarding the use of confession and admission that these must either be accepted as a whole or rejected as a whole and that the court is not competent to accept only the inculpatory part while rejecting the exculpatory part as inherently incredible.”

Mahajan, J.Page 8 of the judgment

“In order to establish the charge under section 201, Indian Penal Code, it is essential to prove that an offence has been committed-mere suspicion that it has been committed is not sufficient,that the accused knew or had reason to believe that such offence had been committed- and with the requisite-knowledge and with the intent to screen the offender from legal punishment causes the evidence thereof to disappear or gives false information respecting such offences knowing or having reason to believe the same to be false.”

Mahajan, J.Page 6 of the judgment

Provisions interpreted

Section 201, Indian Penal CodeNow: BNS 238 (NCRB correspondence table)
Confessions, Indian Evidence Act, 1872 (meaning of 'confession')

Case and bench

Parties: Palvinder Kaur v. The State of Punjab (Rup Singh, Caveator)
Case: Criminal Appeal No. 41 of 1952
Decided: 22 October 1952
Bench: Mahajan, Mehr Chand, Aiyar, N. Chandrasekhara, Bhagwati, Natwarlal H.
Opinions: Unanimous. Judgment of the Court delivered by Mahajan, J.

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