Section 27 of the Indian Evidence Act is an exception to Section 24 to Section 26 which imposes a complete ban on admissibility of any confession made by the accused either in police custody or to a police officer in person.This section lifts the ban if the statement is distinctly related to ‘Discovery of Facts’.
Under Section 27, Discovery statements are given by the accused while he is in police custody and he discloses the place of hiding of a particular fact and on the basis of that statement subsequently an object is discovered.For the application of this section,
- The prosecution must establish that the information given by the accused led to the discovery of some fact disposed of by him.
- It is evident that the police had not previously learnt from other sources the discovery of that fact and the police got the knowledge of the fact from the information given by the accused first.
Section 27 is based on a principle that even though the evidence made by the person in the custody of police officer relating to confessional or other statements , is considered to be tainted and is inadmissible, but if the truth of the information given by person is assured by the discovery of a fact it may be presumed to be untainted and if proved will be admissible.But only ‘so much of the information’ as relates distinctly to the fact discovered is admissible.
