When the Investigation Officer fails to properly investigate the case

“when the Investigation Officer fails to properly investigate the case, he resorts to padding and concoctions like extra-judicial confessions. Such confessions by now have become the sign of incompetent investigation”.

The question as to what is the evidentiary value of an extra-judicial confession and how far it can be relied upon for recording a conviction against an accused has been considered by the Hon’ble Supreme Court of Pakistan in a number of cases. Some of the illuminating judgments in this regard include: “Ahmad v. The Crown” (PLD 1951 FC 107), “Sarfraz Khan v. The State and 2 others” (1996 SCMR 188), “Sarfraz Khan v. The State, etc” (NLR 1996 Criminal 114), “Tayyab Hussain Shah v. The State” (2000 SCMR 683), “Ziaul Rehman v. The State” (2001 SCMR 1405), “Sh. Muhammad Amjad v. The State” (PLD 2003 SC 704), “Rasab Khan v. The State” (2004 SCJ 160), “Sajid Mumtaz and others v. Basharat and others” (2006 SCMR 231), “Muhammad Pervez and others v. The State and others” (2007 SCMR 670), “Tahir Javed v. The State” (2009 SCMR 166) and “Azeem Khan and another v. Mujahid Khan and others” (2016 SCMR 274).

Used in Judgment of
Lahore High Court
Criminal Appeal
284-09
2017 LHC 4010