Supreme Court: Prosecution Must Prove Exclusive Knowledge for Accused Statements under Section 27 of Evidence Act
In the case Ravishankar Tandon vs. State of Chhattisgarh, the Supreme Court acquitted the accused, citing failure to prove evidence under Section 27 of the Evidence Act. Conviction overturned.
The Supreme Court said that if someone is accused of a crime because of what they said under a law called Section 27 of the Evidence Act, the people trying to prove they did it must show that nobody knew about the thing they talked about before they said it.
The court, made up of Justices BR Gavai and Sandeep Mehta, stated, "The people trying to prove the accused did it must show that before the accused said anything about it, nobody knew about the dead body where it was found."
This case is about convicting someone in a lower court for breaking certain laws. They were accused of things like murder and hiding evidence. The police said they found the dead body because the accused person told them where it was when they were being held by the police. The higher court agreed with the lower court's decision.
But in the Supreme Court, the accused argued that the decision to convict them wasn't right because the evidence, like the dead body, wasn't found only because of what they said to the police. They said the prosecution, the people trying to prove they did it, didn't prove that nobody knew about the dead body before they talked about it.
Agreeing with the accused, Justice BR Gavai, who wrote the decision, said, "The prosecution didn't prove that the discovery of the dead body was only because of what the accused said, and nobody knew about it before."
"The evidence from Narendra Kumar and Ramkumar shows that the police and these witnesses already knew about the person's death and where the dead body was before the accused said anything under Section 27 of the Evidence Act," the court noted.
Because of this, the court decided to let the accused go free and canceled the decision to convict them.
The lawyers representing the accused were Mr. Manish Kumar Saran, Ms. Ananya Tyagi, Mr. Chandrika Prasad Mishra, Ms. Nishi Prabha Singh, Ms. Prashasti Singh, Ms. Swati Surbhi, Mr. Upendra Narayan Mishra, Ms. Aswathi M.K., Mr. Prashant Kumar Umrao, Mr. V. Ramasubbu, and Mr. Rishesh Sikarwar.
The lawyers for the other side were Mr. Praneet Pranav and Mr. Prashant Singh.
