Admissions and

Confessions
Ankit Kaushik
Assistant Professor of Law
Admissions
 Section 17:
Admission defined.––An admission is a statement, oral or documentary or contained in electronic
form, which suggests any inference as to any fact in issue or relevant fact, and which is made by
any of the persons, and under the circumstances, hereinafter mentioned.

Key Ingredients:
1. Statement (oral, documentary or electronic)
2. Made by any person
3. Suggests inference as to fact in issue or relevant fact

 Section 3:
“Relevant”. –– One fact is said to be relevant to another when the one is connected with the other
in any of the ways referred to in the provisions of this Act relating to the relevancy of facts. (Same
transaction (section 6), Motive (section 8), Facts required to explain or introduce relevant facts
(section 9) etc.
“Facts in issue”.–– The expression “facts in issue” means and includes –– any fact from which,
either by itself or in connection with other facts, the existence, non-existence, nature or extent of
any right, liability, or disability, asserted or denied in any suit or proceeding, necessarily follows.
Confessions
 Not defined in the Indian Evidence Act, 1872.
 “Confession is an admission made at any time by a person charged with a
crime, and suggesting the inference that he committed that crime.”
- Sir James Fitzjames Stephen

 Pakala Narayan Swami v. Emperor (1939, Bombay High Court)

“in that Act it would not be consistent with the natural use of language to
construe confession as a statement by an accused "suggesting the inference that
he committed" the crime.”
“confession must either admit in (clear) terms the offence, or at any rate
substantially all the facts which constitute the offence. ”
“no statement that contains self exculpatory matter can amount to a confession,
if the exculpatory statement is of some fact which if true would negative the
offence alleged to be confessed.”
Admissions versus Confessions:
Substantive Difference
 Pakala Narayan Swami v. Emperor (1939, Bombay High Court)
“An admission of a gravely incriminating fact, even a conclusively incriminating
fact is not of itself a confession e.g., an admission that the accused is the owner
of and was in recent possession of the knife or revolver which caused a death
Confessions
with no explanation of any other man's possession.” 

Admissions
All Admissions are not confessions
but all confessions are admissions.

 Admission is the genus while confession is a specie.

Admissions versus Confessions:
Substantive Difference

Admission • Civil/Criminal

Confessions • Criminal
Admissions versus Confessions:
Formal Difference
 “Only voluntary and direct acknowledgement of guilt is a confession but when a
confession falls short of actual admission of guilt it may nevertheless be used as
evidence against the person who made it or his authorised agent as an 'admission'
under section.” (CBI v. V. C. Shukla - Supreme Court, 1998)
 A statement made by an accused person, if it is an admission, is admissible in
evidence under Section 21 of the Evidence Act, unless the Statement amounts to
a confession and was made to a person in authority in consequence of some
improper inducement, threat or promise, or was made at a time when the
accused was in custody of a police officer.
 If a statement was made by the accused in the circumstance just mentioned its
admissibility will depend upon the determination of the question whether it does
not does not amount to a confession. If it amounts to a confession, it will be
inadmissible, but if it does not amount to a confession, it will be admissible
under Section 21 of the Act as an admission, provided that it suggests an
inference as to a fact which is in issue in, or relevant to, the case and was not
made to a police officer in the course of an investigation under Chapter XIV of the
Code of criminal procedure. (Monir’s Law of Evidence)
Admissions versus Confessions:
Formal Difference
 A statement made by an accused person is admissible against others who are
being jointly tried with him only if the statement amounts to a confession.
Where the statement falls short of a confession, it is admissible only
against its maker as an admission and not against those who are being
jointly tried with him. (Monir’s Law of Evidence)
 A voluntary confession is a conclusive proof of the matters confessed while an
admission in not a conclusive proof but may be used to estop under section
31.
Admissions versus Confessions:
Formal Difference

Admissions Confessions

Formal Judicial

Extra-
Informal
judicial