The Supreme Court has reiterated a foundational principle of criminal justice: a conviction cannot rest on disclosure statements alone unless every link in the chain of circumstances is firmly forged.
Setting aside a murder conviction, the Court ruled that statements recorded under Section 27 of the Evidence Act—often described as confessional disclosures to the police—cannot, by themselves, sustain guilt when the surrounding circumstantial evidence remains fragmented or doubtful.
The verdict overturned a Karnataka High Court ruling that had reversed an acquittal and convicted the accused largely on the strength of disclosure statements and an alleged recovery said to flow from them. The Supreme Court found this approach legally unsound, stressing that circumstantial cases demand a complete and unbroken narrative pointing only to the guilt of the accused.
The Court was particularly critical of the reliance placed on what it termed “so-called confessional statements,” noting that even the discovery of the dead body was not proved beyond doubt. With the prosecution unable to stitch together motive, last-seen evidence, medical findings, and witness testimony into a coherent whole, the conviction was found to be standing on shaky ground.
In its assessment, the Court also flagged serious concerns about the credibility of the lone “last seen” witness, observing that such testimony, when unsupported by other reliable evidence, cannot shoulder the weight of a conviction. Discrepancies between medical evidence and the prosecution’s version of events further weakened the case.
The Trial Court had earlier acquitted the accused after concluding that the evidentiary chain was incomplete and unreliable. The Supreme Court held that this view was a plausible one and should not have been disturbed. It underscored that when two reasonable interpretations of the evidence are possible, an appellate court must not overturn an acquittal merely because another view appears attractive.
Restoring the acquittal, the Court clarified that convictions built primarily on disclosure statements and uncertain recoveries fail to meet the settled standards governing circumstantial evidence.
With this ruling, the appeals were allowed and the conviction was formally set aside.
