In a ruling sharpening the contours of discovery evidence, the Supreme Court has clarified that disclosure statements made jointly by multiple accused can be admissible under Section 27 of the Indian Evidence Act—but only when each statement leads investigators to a distinct fact tied to the crime. A repeated pointing to what police have already found, the Court made clear, does not create fresh evidentiary value.
The judgment came while the court examined appeals filed by two convicts in a Karnataka murder case. Though the bench of Justices J.B. Pardiwala and K.V. Viswanathan ultimately acquitted the appellants, it used the case to settle an important evidentiary question: when can simultaneous or joint disclosures by different accused be relied upon?
At the heart of the ruling lies a simple principle with far-reaching implications — discovery cannot happen twice.
The prosecution case stemmed from a 2013 murder in Karnataka involving a woman who went missing before her charred skeletal remains were found in a forested area days later. Investigators alleged a conspiracy involving four accused, claiming the victim was abducted, killed and her body burned to erase evidence. Trial and High Court proceedings had upheld convictions, relying in part on disclosure statements made by the accused about the crime scene.
But the Supreme Court found fault in how that evidence was treated.
According to the prosecution, all four accused gave a joint statement about the location where the killing and burning occurred. Police took them to the site, where one accused identified the spot, followed by the others doing the same in succession.
That, the court held, did not amount to separate discoveries.
The bench stressed that Section 27 admits only that portion of information which distinctly relates to a fact discovered. Once a fact is already uncovered through one disclosure, subsequent repetitions by co-accused do not generate a “rediscovery.”
The court’s reasoning cut sharply through the prosecution theory: evidentiary discovery is not something capable of duplication.
While reaffirming that joint disclosures are not automatically inadmissible, the judges underscored that such statements require heightened scrutiny. If multiple accused provide information, each statement must independently lead to something new, specific and relevant. Otherwise, the evidentiary safeguard built into Section 27 collapses.
The ruling also criticized the evidentiary record itself, noting that the panch witness had not clearly identified what each accused specifically stated. That absence of precision weakened the prosecution’s reliance on the disclosures.
Drawing from earlier precedents, including State (NCT of Delhi) v. Navjot Sandhu and a 2025 Karnataka case, the court acknowledged practical difficulties surrounding joint statements but warned that convenience cannot replace legal rigor.
The judgment also carved out a nuanced possibility: where multiple accused offer similar information in rapid succession, admissibility may still arise—but only if each disclosure carries the guarantee of truth through discovery of a distinct fact. Without that, Section 27 offers no prosecutorial support.
For criminal trials that often lean heavily on recovery evidence, the ruling is significant. It narrows the misuse of repetitive disclosures while reinforcing that discovery evidence is valuable precisely because it reveals something unknown—not because multiple people later echo it.
The verdict does more than interpret Section 27. It draws a boundary: evidence born of discovery cannot be multiplied through repetition. Once the fact is found, the law does not permit it to be found again.
