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Union of India v. Sandeep Kumar

Criminal Appeal · 2019 INSC 1030Decided 13 Sept 2019
Criminal Appeal Nos. 1388-1389 of 2019
Justice L. Nageswara Rao · Justice Hemant Gupta

Background

Two Army soldiers were accused of stealing two pistols during a tank-conversion training exercise in Rajasthan in 2006. A District Court Martial convicted and dismissed them from service based on their written and verbal confessions made before fellow soldiers and officers. The Armed Forces Tribunal later set aside the conviction, reasoning that confessions made to the Army could not be relied upon and ordering reinstatement without back wages. The Union of India appealed this reversal to the Supreme Court, while the soldiers separately appealed the denial of back wages.

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court held that the Tribunal had misread the law: confessions are inadmissible only when made to a police officer (including a military police officer), not when made to an ordinary Army officer or before fellow soldiers, so the soldiers' confessions were validly used as evidence. The Court also found the Tribunal wrongly disturbed the trial court's factual findings without any genuine legal error, exceeding its appellate jurisdiction under Section 15 of the Armed Forces Tribunal Act. It restored the conviction while reducing the sentence to time already served. The appeals of the two convicted soldiers were dismissed.

Lesson Learnt

A confession made to a regular Army/military officer (as opposed to a police or military police officer) can be used as evidence in a court martial, and appellate tribunals cannot overturn trial findings merely because a different view is possible: there must be a genuine legal error.

Official source (sci.gov.in)View Judgment (PDF)

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