Excise investigation confessions excluded where officer's powers resemble a police station officer, barring conviction on the statement alone.

Where an excise officer is empowered by statute to investigate excise offences with powers closely resembling those of an officer in charge of a police station, a confession recorded in that investigation is treated as hit by section 25 of the Indian Evidence Act and cannot be used against the accused. The same statement is also barred under section 162 of the Code of Criminal Procedure when recorded during such an investigation, except for contradiction. Once the confession was excluded, the conviction could not be sustained. A concurring opinion accepted the result but doubted that an Excise Inspector was a police officer, relying instead on lack of voluntariness and insufficiency of remaining evidence.

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Issues: (i) Whether a confession recorded by an Excise Inspector empowered to investigate excise offences is inadmissible under section 25 of the Indian Evidence Act, 1872. (ii) Whether such a statement is also hit by section 162 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1898.

Issue (i): Whether a confession recorded by an Excise Inspector empowered to investigate excise offences is inadmissible under section 25 of the Indian Evidence Act, 1872.

Analysis: The statutory scheme under the Bihar and Orissa Excise Act, 1915 conferred on the empowered Excise Officer powers of investigation closely corresponding to those of an officer in charge of a police station. The Court treated the relevant test as whether the powers conferred were such as to facilitate obtaining a confession from a suspect. On that footing, the officer's function in investigating excise offences brought him within the mischief of section 25.

Conclusion: The confession was inadmissible under section 25, and not available against the accused.

Issue (ii): Whether such a statement is also hit by section 162 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1898.

Analysis: Section 162 applies to statements made to a police officer during an investigation under the Code. Since the empowered Excise Officer was deemed to exercise police-station powers for excise investigations, the statement recorded during that investigation was treated as one within the prohibition against substantive use, save for contradiction.

Conclusion: The statement was also inadmissible under section 162.

Final Conclusion: The conviction could not stand once the confession was excluded, and the appellant was entitled to relief.

Concurring Opinion: Raghubar Dayal, J. agreed that the appeal should be allowed and the conviction set aside, but held that an Excise Inspector was not a police officer within section 25. He nevertheless declined to sustain the conviction because the confession was not shown to be voluntary and the remaining evidence was insufficient.

Ratio Decidendi: Where a statute empowers an investigating excise officer to exercise powers functionally equivalent to those of an officer in charge of a police station, a confession recorded in the course of that investigation is hit by the exclusionary rule against confessions to police officers and cannot be used to sustain conviction.

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