Kathmandu, 07 September 2015: Advocacy Forum-Nepal (AF) organized a consultation meeting on "Confession and Evaluation of Evidences" during criminal legal proceedings in August/September 2015 in Kathmandu, Kaski, Rupandehi, Banke and Kanchanpur districts. In the meetings, a total of 220 participants including Judges, Public Prosecutors, Defence Lawyers and Police Officers and concerned stakeholders were participated. In the programme, AF presented the data it had collected by interviewing detainees detained in various Police detention centers from January to June 2015. During this period, AF interviewed a total of 763 (86 Female and 677 male) detainees. Among them 16% detainees claimed that they were subjected to torture and ill-treatment in police detention centers. Among them 14.4 % detainees reported that they were forced to sign the confession.

The district judges who were resource person of the meetings, presented concept papers on practice of using confessions extracted from the detainees for criminal legal proceedings, detainees' right to remain silence, verification of confessions with corroborating evidences, national and international legal provisions on confession and evaluation of evidences during criminal legal proceedings etc. Judges and lawyers shared their various experiences they had during criminal legal proceedings. Similarly, police officers shared the legal and practical barriers on criminal investigations, use of confessions during legal proceedings and evidence based investigation and confession based investigation etc.

In the programme, all the stakeholders of the criminal justice system expressed their commitment to coordinate to each other to uphold the rule of law and fair trial from their respective offices. The program was supported by Association for Prevention of Torture (APT), a Geneva based human rights NGO.