HC acquits 3 in murder case over lapses in confession

Madurai: Madras high court has set aside the conviction and life sentence awarded by a lower court to three people involved in a murder case in Tirunelveli district in 2009 saying their confession statement was inadmissible.

The prosecution case was that the three who were running a browsing centre had hatched a conspiracy 15 days prior to the date of murder to avenge the killing of their brother.

In order to get rid of the deceased, who was holding the post of Cable TV Operators’ president, they engaged five people. On May 6, 2009, Murugan, Thamburan and Ponniah entered the browsing centre run by the victim and assaulted him using machette leading to his instant death. Tenkasi police registered a case and on May 8 the trio surrendered before the Tirunelveli judicial magistrate III. When the accused were taken into custody, they voluntarily confessed to the murder.

The district and sessions judge (communal clash cases court) at Madurai convicted and awarded life imprisonment to the trio on October 31, 2017 while acquitting five people. The accused moved the HC Madurai bench in 2017 seeking to set aside the conviction and sentence and sought to acquit them. A division bench of Justice S Vaidyanathan and Justice N Anand Venkatesh observed that it is now a settled law that the 164 statement is not a substantial piece of evidence and can only be used to contradict or corroborate a substantial evidence.

“It is clear from a Supreme Court judgment that the magistrate must first certify that he believed the confession was voluntarily made by the accused persons. If the magistrate recording the confession of an accused person does not categorically certify his satisfaction or belief as to the voluntary nature of the confession recorded by him, the Supreme Court has held that it would be fatal to the admissibility and use of the confession against the accused during trial. In the present case, this mandatory requirement has not been satisfied by the judicial magistrate,” observed the judges.

Citing another judgment, the judges observed, “The relevancy between the crime and the fact discovered should be proved through other evidence and not by the confession itself. From the above confession statement said to have been given by the accused persons, the admissible portion of the confession does not even state at which place they have kept the weapon and what has been made admissible is also the inculpatory statement and the same is inadmissible under Section 25 of the Indian Evidence Act.”

Stating that the discovery of fact based on the confession does not in any way help the prosecution, the judges set aside the conviction and sentence awarded by the lower court to the accused persons, citing that the prosecution has failed to prove the case beyond reasonable doubts.