VoxJuris
Home › Acts › Evidence Act › Chapter II › Section 25

Indian Evidence Act, 1872 · Chapter II: Of the Relevancy of Facts · Admissions

Section 25: Confession to police-officer not to be proved

The Indian Evidence Act, 1872 was repealed and replaced by the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam, 2023 from 1 July 2024. It still applies to matters and proceedings from before that date, as the repealing law provides.

Now in the BSA section 23 (Confession to police officer)

In plain words

No confession made to a police officer can be proved against a person accused of any offence.

A simplified explanation, prepared with AI assistance from the official text below and checked automatically against it for numbers and cross-references. The official text is the law and prevails over this summary. Not legal advice.

Read the in-depth explanation, with key Supreme Court rulings ↓

Official text

No confession made to a police-officer3, shall be proved as against a person accused of any offence.

Corresponding sections were matched by comparing the wording of both official texts, and for the IPC and BNS, also against a published correspondence table. Wording, punishments and structure often changed, so read both sections before relying on the match.

Source: India Code (Legislative Department), the text of the Act as it stood before its repeal. Words in square brackets [ ] were inserted or substituted by later amending Acts, and *** marks words omitted by an amendment. The amendment footnotes are not reproduced here.

Understanding this section

Section 25 is one of the strongest protections in Indian criminal law: no confession made to a police officer can be proved against the accused. Section 26 extends the bar to confessions made to anyone while the accused is in police custody, unless made in the immediate presence of a Magistrate. Section 27 then carves out a narrow exception for information that leads to the discovery of a fact.

Why the rule exists

The fear is that confessions to the police may be extracted by force, threats or inducement, and that such abuse is hard to prove. So the law simply refuses to admit them, however voluntary they may appear. It does not matter whether the accused was in custody when he spoke to the police.

Confession versus admission

A confession is a statement admitting the offence, or at least substantially all the facts that make up the offence. A statement admitting only some incriminating fact, even a conclusive one, is an admission, not a confession. An admission made to the police during investigation is still caught by the bar in section 162 of the Code of Criminal Procedure.

Who is a police officer

The words are read in their ordinary, broad sense. Courts look at whether the officer has powers of investigation that include filing a police report. Officers under some special laws, such as customs officers, have been held not to be police officers for this purpose.

How sections 24 to 30 fit

  • Section 24: a confession caused by inducement, threat or promise from a person in authority is irrelevant.
  • Section 25: confession to a police officer cannot be proved.
  • Section 26: confession while in police custody cannot be proved, unless before a Magistrate.
  • Section 27: information leading to discovery of a fact may be proved, to that limited extent.
  • Section 30: a confession by one accused may be considered against a co-accused tried jointly, but only as lending assurance to other evidence.

Key Supreme Court rulings

  • Pakala Narayana Swami v. Emperor (1939) PC 47

    Explained that a confession is a statement admitting the offence or at any rate substantially all the facts which constitute it; an admission of a gravely incriminating fact, even a conclusively incriminating one, is not of itself a confession.

  • P Krishna Mohan Reddy v. The State of Andhra Pradesh 2025 INSC 725

    A confessional statement by an accused to the police is wholly inadmissible under sections 25 and 26; if the statement is only an admission, the bar in section 162 of the Code of Criminal Procedure applies.

  • Sadashiv Dhondiram Patil v. The State of Maharashtra 2025 INSC 93

    Considered whether a village Police Patil is a police officer for the purpose of section 25, discussing his powers under the Maharashtra Village Police Act.

Common mistakes

  • Admitting a confession to the police because it appears voluntary. Section 25 bars it regardless.
  • Treating every incriminating statement as a confession. Admissions are different.
  • Forgetting that section 27 admits only the part that leads to discovery.

Read with: Section 24 Evidence Act, Section 26 Evidence Act, Section 27 Evidence Act, Section 23 BSA

Prepared with AI assistance as a study aid. Every ruling listed was checked against the Supreme Court's own judgments on this site, and quoted words appear in those judgments; linked names open the full judgment. Read the judgments themselves before relying on them. Not legal advice.

Supreme Court judgments citing the section 25