Criminal Confessions- Relevancy and Admissibility

According to Sir James Stephen, “an admission made at any time by a person charged with a crime stating or suggesting the inference that he committed a crime.” Confession is neither defined nor expressed in the Indian Evidence Act, but it is mentioned under the head ‘Admission’ and appears under section 24 of the Act. A confession is a declaration made by an individual or a group of individuals admitting some subjective truth that the individual would generally prefer to remain concealed. Confession is described either as assuming fault in general or admitting fundamentally all of the facts that constitute the offense. It is a combined declaration that, while including certain confessional statements, will still result in acquittal is not a confession. As a result, a statement containing self-exculpatory information that, if valid, would contradict the issue or offence cannot be considered a confession. ‘The key distinction between a confession and an admission is that where conviction may be solely based on the assertion, it is a confession, and where any supplementary proof is required to allow a prosecution, it is an admission. Similar test, is if the prosecutor depends on the statement as true or false. If the prosecution depends on the statement as fact, it is confession; if the statement is based on since it is false, it is admission.’ In criminal cases, admission is a declaration made by the accused that does not lead to a confession but raises the possibility that the accused committed the crime.