State of Uttar Pradesh v Deoman Upadhyaya

Facts

Deoman Upadhyaya was tried on wholly circumstantial evidence for the murder of his relative Sukhdei on 19 June 1958, following a quarrel over property in which he had threatened and slapped her. After absconding, he was arrested on 21 June 1958 and, while in custody, offered to point out the gandasa (a curved blade) he had used; in the presence of witnesses he recovered the blood-stained weapon from a village tank, and serological examination confirmed human blood on it. The Sessions Judge at Gyanpur convicted him and sentenced him to death, subject to High Court confirmation. The Allahabad High Court, holding Section 27 of the Evidence Act void as violating Article 14, excluded his recovery statement and acquitted him, prompting the State's appeal.

Issues

• Whether Section 27 of the Indian Evidence Act, 1872 is void as offending Article 14 of the Constitution by discriminating between persons in police custody and persons not in custody as regards the admissibility of information leading to the discovery of a fact.
• Whether Section 162(2) of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1898, in so far as it relates to Section 27, is consequently void.
• Whether, if the recovery statement were admissible, the circumstantial evidence established the respondent's guilt beyond reasonable doubt.

Arguments

The State contended that Section 27 rests on an intelligible differentia: persons in custody stand in a materially different position, and information they give that leads to discovery carries a built-in guarantee of reliability, so the classification bears a rational relation to the object of admitting trustworthy evidence. The respondent argued that Section 27 makes an arbitrary distinction between accused persons in custody and out of custody for which there is no intelligible differentia, that the pre-1872 law covered both categories, and that the classification therefore violates Article 14.

Held

The majority (Shah J, with Das, Kapur and Hidayatullah JJ) held that Section 27 is constitutionally valid and does not offend Article 14. A doctrinaire approach must be avoided: persons in custody and persons not in custody are genuinely differently situated, and a person not in custody who approaches the police and volunteers information leading to a discovery may, by that very conduct, be deemed to have submitted to custody within Section 46 CrPC, so the supposed discrimination is largely illusory. The fact of discovery furnishes a guarantee of the truth of so much of the information as relates distinctly to the fact discovered, which justifies its admissibility. The phrase 'person accused of any offence' in Section 27 is merely descriptive of the person against whom the evidence is led, not a requirement of a formal accusation when the statement is made. Section 162(2) CrPC being valid in consequence, the Court set aside the High Court's acquittal, restored the Sessions Court's conviction and confirmed the death sentence. Subba Rao J dissented, holding Section 27 void for want of any intelligible differentia between in-custody and out-of-custody confessors.

Ratio decidendi

Section 27 of the Evidence Act draws a valid classification between persons in custody and persons not in custody, which is reasonable and bears a rational nexus to its object, and so does not violate Article 14. So much of the information given by an accused in custody as relates distinctly to the fact thereby discovered is admissible, because the discovery itself guarantees its reliability; and 'accused of an offence' describes the person against whom evidence is led, not the existence of a formal charge at the time the statement is made.

Significance

A landmark on the constitutionality and scope of the recovery / discovery exception, repeatedly followed on the proposition that Section 27 admits only the portion of an accused's statement that distinctly relates to the fact discovered and on the meaning of 'accused of an offence'. The same recovery principle now sits in Section 23(2) of the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam, 2023 (with the bars on confessions to police and in custody in Section 23(1) BSA, replacing Sections 25-26 IEA), and the police-statement bar in Section 181(2) BNSS, 2023 (replacing Section 162 CrPC), so the case continues to govern the interpretation of the new provisions. The reasoning on Article 14 classification is also widely cited in constitutional law.

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