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Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam, 2023

Section 22, BSA: Confession caused by inducement, threat, coercion or promise, when irrelevant in criminal proceeding

Pundora · Published 3 October 2026

Section 22 of the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam, 2023, in the Act's own words, with the Evidence Act provision it replaces.

What it replaces

BSA provisionEvidence Act provisionRelation
Section 22Section 28corresponds — First proviso to section 22 Second
Section 22Section 29corresponds — Second proviso to section 22 23(1)
Section 22(1)Section 24corresponds

From the Bureau of Police Research and Development's official comparison summary (source below). The whole table: Evidence Act to BSA.

The section

22. Confession caused by inducement, threat, coercion or promise, when irrelevant in criminal proceeding.

A confession made by an accused person is irrelevant in a criminal proceeding, if the making of the confession appears to the Court to have been caused by any inducement, threat, coercion or promise having reference to the charge against the accused person, proceeding from a person in authority and sufficient, in the opinion of the Court, to give the accused person grounds which would appear to him reasonable for supposing that by making it he would gain any advantage or avoid any evil of a temporal nature in reference to the proceedings against him: Provided that if the confession is made after the impression caused by any such inducement, threat, coercion or promise has, in the opinion of the Court, been fully removed, it is relevant: Provided further that if such a confession is otherwise relevant, it does not become irrelevant merely because it was made under a promise of secrecy, or in consequence of a deception practised on the accused person for the purpose of obtaining it, or when he was drunk, or because it was made in answer to questions which he need not have answered, whatever may have been the form of those questions, or because he was not warned that he was not bound to make such confession, and that evidence of it might be given against him.

The text is India Code's consolidated text as loaded into Pundora's statute corpus on 1 September 2026. A section quoted in a draft checked by Pundora is checked against this text.

Sources

  1. India Code: Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam, 2023, section 22 (read 1 September 2026)
  2. Bureau of Police Research and Development: comparison summary, BSA to Evidence Act (read 1 September 2026)

The Act's own words, from India Code. If the text here differs from the Gazette, the Gazette governs; write to contact@pundora.in and it will be corrected and dated.