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BSA 2023ACTIVE FRAMEWORK
Section 26
How Much of Information Received from Accused May Be Proved
THE STATUTE
Original Text
Provided that, when any fact is deposed to as discovered in consequence of information received from a person accused of any offence, in the custody of a police officer, so much of such information, whether it amounts to a confession or not, as relates distinctly to the fact thereby discovered, may be proved.
Legal Commentary
BSA Section 26 is textually identical to IEA Section 27. All case law (Pulukuri Kotayya, Mohmed Inayatullah, and hundreds of subsequent decisions applying the discovery exception) applies directly under BSA Section 26.
The BSA's modernisation of the document definition in Section 2 has one practical implication for Section 26: if the accused's information leads to the discovery of digital evidence (e.g., 'I stored the incriminating files in a specific cloud folder'), that discovery of electronic records can now be proved under Section 26 with equal ease, without requiring the Section 65B/Section 57 certification dance for the discovery itself (though the electronic records would need certification for admissibility on their own merits).
Questions & Answers
No — BSA Section 26 is textually identical to IEA Section 27. The discovery exception operates the same way: information from accused in police custody, leading to new discovery of a physical fact, admissible only to the extent relating to the discovered fact. All IEA Section 27 case law applies.