Delhi court rejects police's plea to conduct polygraph test on murder accused

A court has rejected Delhi Police's plea to conduct tests, including polygraph, voice stress analysis and psychological assessment on six murder accused and said they can't be forced.

Additional Session Judge Alok Shukla was hearing an application filed by the investigating officer (IO) of New Ashok Nagar Police Station seeking permission to conduct the tests.

The plea was filed in connection with a 2020 case in which one Ankit Bhati filed a complaint that his wife, Sheetal Choudhary was kidnapped by six of her relatives, including her parents.

The FIR was initially registered for the offence of kidnapping, but later a dead body was found in a canal in Aligarh, which the complainant identified as his wife following which murder charges were added in the case.

In an order dated May 29, the court said, ''It is settled law that compulsory or involuntary administration of a polygraph test on an accused violates the right against self-incrimination.'' ''Since accused persons have not consented to conducting the tests, the court cannot force the accused persons to undergo the tests sought to be conducted by the IO. Accordingly, the application is dismissed,'' the court added.

The accused persons, the court said, objected to the plea for the tests saying the IO did not file any evidence to link the accused persons with the crime and that there was no fresh evidence to warrant the evaluations.

''DNA profiling of the alleged dead body (of Sheetal) clearly states that the accused number 1 and 3 are not the biological father and mother of the (recovered) dead body and as per the law of the land the DNA test deems to be very reliable in itself to prove the relationship between two individuals and in the present case the DNA result is negative and the investigating officer by preferring the application under reply is indirectly challenging the genuineness of the DNA report,'' the court said.

The accused persons are the woman's father, Ravinder Choudhary, mother Suman, uncle Sanjay Choudhary, paternal aunt's husband or fufa, Om Prakash, cousin Pravesh and brother-in-law Ankit.

They all were granted bail.

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)