Voluntary statement and mandatory punishment
A senior lawyer to his junior, “if you have evidence on your side, bang the witness, if you have law on your side bang the jury”. “What if I have none?” asks the junior. “bang the table” replied the experienced senior.
Recording of statements from hapless victims is a hobby for many officers. Where evidence is weak and people are too lazy to investigate there is this weapon of statements. You can beat the hell out of any person and get any statements recorded from him. But can it be even a weak substitute for proper investigation and gathering concrete evidence?. The belief that the statement given before the Customs or Central Excise officer is a valid piece of evidence unlike the one given before a police officer, has caused many a good case being sacrificed with a statement instead of investigation.
• This statement is given out of my own free will.
• There was no threat, coercion and inducement.
• I know that this statement can be used against me.
• I have been told that I need not give the statement.
• I am told that these proceedings are judicial.
These are the profound sentences that you will find in any statement recorded by departmental officers. It beats logic as to why any sane person would be lured by a love letter popularly called the summons and come to the officer and open his heart out to declare, “I am an evader, I am a smuggler so I deserve the worst treatment in hell and since the department is not prepared to wait till I reach there I may kindly be given the benign punishment herein and now.”
This is the catch 22 situation. You will be exempted from joining the army only if you declare you are mad. A mad person cannot declare that he is mad. So if you declare you are mad it is proved you are not mad and so you are required to join. But if you are not mad it is mad join.
A voluntary statement by definition is not voluntary. Nobody would give that kind of statement if he is not mad and if he is mad that statement has no relevance. It is unfortunate that the law does not recognise the simple fact of life that no normal person could come willingly to the office to give a willing voluntary statement to sign his death warrant. Behind every statement lies a long and tortuous story of harassment, ill-treatment, indignity, threat, inducement, and sometime neat and plane third degree. Most often the statements are dictated by the officers and the persons are made to write them down in long shabby hand writing to establish more credibility. What this results in is - appellate judicial authorities have to strain their eyes and nerves to decipher the shabby handwriting.
Is it proper to base a case on such an illogical, ill-gotten statement? As such the Central Excise law is silent on the entire procedure starting from preventive check to prosecution. Investigation by a police officer is well codified ending in a police report before a court. Under Central Excise, perhaps everybody in the department knows what to do if a summoned person turns up and how to record a willing statement. But if the disobedient, arrogant, and no-good assessee does not turn up or refuses to turn up, nobody knows what to do. A statement is recorded from the one who is available and obedient but nothing happens to the one who doesn’t honour the summons. Even after making a case, the law is totally silent on who should file the compliant. Strangely there is no authority specified under the Central Excise law who is authorised to file a compliant for prosecution.
Isn’t time we rely on hard documentary evidence instead of fabricated statements?
DDT’s question
Are you entitled to a copy of the statement immediately after it is recorded?