Supreme Court upholds conviction of accused whose confessional statement taken in Malayalam, translated to Tamil and typed out in Kannada

The Supreme Court recently upheld the conviction of a murder accused whose confessional statement was taken in Malayalam, translated to Tamil and then typed out by the police in Kannada [Siju Kurian v State of Karnataka]..A Bench of Justices Surya Kant and Aravind Kumar opined that the ultimate test would be whether the statement was noted down as told by the accused. "Merely because the translation was made from Malayalam to Tamil and written down in Kannada would not suggest that such statement be held to be either not being voluntary or the said statement having been recorded improperly," the top court held. .The Court recorded that it was through this statement that the police recovered the victim's body. Therefore, the part of the confession which led to the body's recovery was admissible. .The Court was hearing an appeal by a murder accused convicted by the Karnataka High Court and sentenced to life imprisonment. The appellant submitted that the conviction was solely based on a confessional statement allegedly given by him to the police, which was not reliable and ought not to have been accepted since it was recorded in Kannada, a language not known to the accused. .According to the appellant, the procedure of asking questions and eliciting answers was done by one of the prosecution witnesses who did not know how to read and write Malayalam but could speak the language.The police asked questions in Kannada, which were in turn translated to Malayalam by the prosecution witnesses to elicit answers from the appellant in that language. The appellant's answers were then translated to Tamil and typed out in Kannada by the police.This, it was submitted, was an unusual method of recording the confession and was, therefore, not admissible.On examining the facts, the Bench held that Section 27 of the Evidence Act permits the derivative use of a custodial statement in the ordinary course of events. There is no automatic presumption that custodial statements have been extracted through compulsion. “The statement of an accused recorded while being in police custody can be split into its components and can be separated from the admissible portions. Such of those components or portions which were the immediate cause of the discovery would be the legal evidence and the rest can be rejected,” the Court said..Therefore, it held that the appellant’s contention that the confession statement is to be discarded in its entirety could not be accepted.“Statement of the accused (Ex.P-2) having been recorded being voluntary and when the statement is being recorded in the language not known to the accused, the assistance of interpreter if taken by the police cannot be found fault with.”.The Court also discussed other surrounding circumstances which proved that the accused was guilty of the offence beyond reasonable doubt. Thus, it was concluded that the High Court arrived at the right conclusion..Advocates Renjith B Marar, Zulfiker Ali PS, Lakshmi Sree P and Lebina Baby appeared for the appellant while standing counsel VN Raghupathy represented the State..[Read Judgment]