Investigating agencies, are defying with impunity the Supreme Court’s mandate against forcible extraction of information from suspects through globally discarded brain mapping tests.
NEW DELHI: Investigating agencies, particularly the police, are defying with impunity the Supreme Court’s mandate against forcible extraction of information from suspects through globally discarded Narco or brain mapping tests. That’s the unanimous view of some lawyers concerned with protection of human rights.
That the supreme court restrained the police from subjecting the petitioners to drug-induced tests implies that it is against this form of interrogation. “But investigating agencies all over the country have been defying this direction… It’s contempt of the apex court and also against all norms of human rights,” says noted criminal law expert and former additional solicitor general KTS Tulsi.
The apex court stayed Gawli’s test after Tulsi made a fervent plea that nowhere in the world is this kind of inhuman interrogation allowed. “It is worse than third degree methods,” he said. Noted civil liberties lawyer Prashant Bhushan agrees with Tulsi as he asserts that tests like narco and brain mapping invade privacy of individuals. “It’s intrusive as the drug used on suspects could have adverse effect on human brain and his or her health,” Bhushan adds.
Waiting anxiously for the supreme court’s judgment on constitutionality of an amended provision, Section 161 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, that regulates the entire criminal proceedings, criminal lawyer Manoj Goel maintains that narco test in particular violates right to privacy.
He had argued that the test was against right to silence and also violates Article 21 of the Constitution that guarantees right to life with dignity. The apex court had stayed the narco test on his client. The Bombay high court had earlier said narco tests could be administered to any accused or a witness but the revelations made are not statements as recognised by the Evidence Act.
After hearing a batch of petitions challenging validity of these drug-induced tests, a bench headed by chief justice KG Balakrishnan had a poser for Goel, wondering whether the scientific investigation through these tests would curb encounter killings.
“Have you been able to stop third degree methods, or encounters? You have to see the greater evil. Because otherwise they (police) will adopt third degree methods and even encounters,” the court had remarked as it sought the views of lawyers appearing in this matter.
The judgment is awaited.
b_rakesh@dnaindia.net
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