State of Maharashtra v Damu

Facts

Four accused, believing hidden treasure lay beneath land at Chanda village, conspired to perform ritual human sacrifice of children to unearth it. Three children — Meera (1992), Devidas (1994) and Deepak (1995) — were abducted, mutilated and killed, while another child, Sagar, survived two abduction attempts and deposed at trial. The prosecution relied on a retracted judicial confession, the surviving and child witnesses, and circumstantial evidence including the recovery of a broken piece of motorcycle tail-lamp glass pointed out by an accused that matched the damaged lamp of the vehicle used to carry a body. The trial court convicted and sentenced the accused to death, but the High Court acquitted them, doubting the confession; the State appealed to the Supreme Court.

Issues

• Whether the judicial confession was voluntary and could be relied on despite retraction and prolonged prior police custody.
• What is the true scope of the 'fact discovered' under Section 27 of the Evidence Act — does it cover only the object recovered, or also the place and the accused's knowledge of it?
• Whether the statements and acts of co-conspirators were admissible under Section 10 of the Evidence Act.
• Whether the circumstantial evidence, including child witness testimony, established guilt beyond reasonable doubt.

Arguments

The State contended that the confession was properly recorded by a Judicial Magistrate after an adequate gap from police custody, that institutional proximity of the police station to the sub-jail did not vitiate judicial independence, and that the discovery evidence and child witnesses amply corroborated guilt. The defence (accepted by the High Court) argued that prolonged police custody rendered the confession suspect and untrue, that the proximity of the recording arrangements compromised its voluntariness, and that the circumstantial and child-witness evidence was unreliable.

Held

The Supreme Court set aside the acquittal and restored the convictions, holding the confession voluntary as there was about a month's gap between release from police custody and its recording, and institutional location did not impair the Magistrate's independence. On Section 27, the Court held that 'the basic idea embedded in Section 27 is the doctrine of confirmation by subsequent events' — discovery of a fact on information from an accused guarantees the truth of that information. Relying on Pulukuri Kottaya v Emperor (AIR 1947 PC 67), it held that the 'fact discovered' embraces the place from which the object is produced and the accused's knowledge of it, the information being admissible only so far as it distinctly relates to that discovery; recovery of an object alone is not discovery of a fact. The matching motorcycle tail-lamp glass thus confirmed that the accused had carried the deceased on that vehicle to the spot. The Court also upheld the admissibility of conspirators' statements under Section 10 and the reliability of the child witnesses, while reducing the death sentence to life imprisonment.

Ratio decidendi

The 'fact discovered' within Section 27 of the Evidence Act is not the mere physical object recovered but the place from which it is produced together with the accused's knowledge of it; admissibility rests on the doctrine of confirmation by subsequent events, the discovery vouching for the truth of the information that led to it.

Significance

A leading authority on Section 27, repeatedly followed for the proposition that recovery of an object is not by itself a 'discovery of fact' and for articulating the 'doctrine of confirmation by subsequent events'; it also remains a key precedent on retracted judicial confessions, conspirators' statements and circumstantial evidence. The corresponding provision is now Section 23(2) of the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam, 2023, which re-enacts the Section 27 rule in substantially the same terms, so the Damu interpretation continues to govern discovery evidence under the BSA.

Related