“All confessions are admission but all admission are confession” with this statement we can say that there is some relationship between both the terms i.e confession and admission. To understand such a relationship, we have to understand some related provisions of the Indian Evidence Act.
Section 17 till 31 of the Evidence Act covers the provision related to admission which also includes the provision related to confession, confession is nowhere defined under the Evidence Act but the irrelevancy of confession is covered under the provision of admissions itself which manifest that they are inter related. Let’s first understand what these two terms mean-
Admissions are defined under section 17 of the Evidence Act which means that any statement was given by a person in his ordinary life to someone & can be used against him, in other words, any self-harming statement that he stated to someone & can be used as evidence in a form of admission against him. For example- A’ said to B’ “that he doesn’t like C’, and seeing him nearby I felt like killing him”, Now if C is dead then in trial A’s statement can be used against him (A’) as his admission of a fact that he doesn’t like C and he is desirous to kill C.
Confession is not defined under Evidence Act but the irrelevancy of confessions is given under the chapter of admission of the Evidence Act. The meaning of confession is accepting own guilt. For example: – A said to B that he killed C.
With the above explanation, we can understand that admissions are any self-harming statement and confessions are also self-harming statements but these are expressly accepting a pang of guilt, that a said person has himself done any offense. Under section 17 admissions are defined and section 21 of the Evidence act states the relevancy of admission whereas confessions are not defined under the Evidence Act but the irrelevancy of confessions is given under sections 24-26 of the Evidence act. The question arises here, where confessions are relevant? When all confessions are admissions then definitely confessions are also relevant under section 21 of the Evidence itself.
