Section 138

Criminal conspiracies and group crimes often mean the only witnesses are people who were themselves involved. If the law banned their testimony outright, many guilty people could never be convicted. But accomplices have an obvious motive to lie, shift blame, or protect themselves through deals with prosecutors. This provision, carried over from the Indian Evidence Act, 1872 (as Section 133), balances these concerns: it permits accomplice testimony as legally competent, while courts have developed a practice of requiring corroboration to guard against false implication.

Indian courts, drawing on the English case R v. Baskerville, have long held that while an accomplice's testimony is legally admissible and a conviction based on it is not illegal, it is unsafe as a matter of judicial prudence to convict without independent corroboration connecting the accused to the crime. In Sarwan Singh v. State of Punjab, the Supreme Court emphasized that accomplice evidence must be approached with great caution and ideally corroborated in material particulars, especially since an accomplice is a 'partner in crime' with self-interest in shifting blame. This judge-made 'rule of prudence' works alongside the statutory provision, which only says such a conviction is not illegal, not that corroboration is unnecessary.

• Myth: An accomplice's testimony alone is legally worthless and can never be used to convict someone.
  Fact: The law says a conviction based on accomplice testimony is not illegal, meaning it can legally stand — but courts, as a matter of caution, usually look for corroborating evidence before relying on it.
• Myth: Corroboration of accomplice testimony is a strict legal requirement written into this section.
  Fact: The section itself does not mandate corroboration; the requirement is a judicial rule of prudence developed by courts to ensure safe convictions, not a textual command in this provision.