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Seeking voice sample to match with call not a violation of rights, says HC
The Delhi high court has held that directing an individual to provide voice samples for comparison with intercepted phone calls does not infringe the fundamental right against self-incrimination or the right to privacy
The Delhi high court has held that directing an individual to provide voice samples for comparison with intercepted phone calls does not infringe the fundamental right against self-incrimination or the right to privacy.
The right against self-incrimination guaranteed under Article 20(3) of the Constitution of India protects an accused from being compelled to testify against themselves.
A bench of justice Neena Bansal Krishna, in her verdict delivered on December 24, ruled that voice samples constitute mere “material evidence” for comparison purposes and are innocuous in nature, as they do not amount to oral or documentary testimony capable of incriminating the accused.
“The direction to provide a voice sample does not violate article 20(3) of the Constitution as it does not constitute testimonial compulsion. While the Right to Privacy is a fundamental right, it is not absolute and must yield to legitimate State interests, such as the prevention and investigation of crime,” the court ruled in its verdict, released on Saturday.
It added, “Such samples are considered ‘material evidence’ for comparison. They are not oral or documentary testimony that, by itself, tends to incriminate the accused. The voice sample itself is innocuous; it is the comparison with the material discovered during investigation, i.e., the intercepts, that may incriminate, which does not fall under testimonial compulsion.”
The court delivered the ruling while dealing with Kanpur businessman Moin Akhtar Qureshi’s petition challenging the trial court’s October 2021 order directing him to provide voice samples to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) for comparison with intercepted telephone conversations recorded in 2013–14, in a corruption case.
The case against Qureshi, whose name had surfaced in the CBI v CBI fight between the agency’s then Director Alok Verma and Special Director Rakesh Asthana, had stemmed after the Income Tax Department (IT Department) intercepted telephone calls on the numbers allegedly belonging to him from October 2013 to December 2013. The calls alleged that Qureshi acted as a middleman for certain public servants. The CBI in 2017 booked Qureshi under various provisions of the Indian Penal Code and the Prevention of Corruption Act.
In his petition before the high court, Qureshi, represented by advocates RK Handoo and Yoginder Handoo, had asserted that the calls intercepted by the IT department in 2013-14 constituted stale material and the intercepts were made illegally. He also contended that compelling a voice sample violated his fundamental right against self-incrimination and amounted to testimonial compulsion. The same, Qureshi, in his petition, also violated his fundamental right to privacy.
The CBI’s lawyer Ripudaman Bhardwaj had opposed the petition, asserting that the recording was obtained officially from the IT department, which conducted the surveillance under authorisation. The counsel further argued that voice samples were only being sought for identification purposes, and the same did not amount to giving testimony against oneself.
Consequently, the court affirmed the trial court’s order, observing that adequate safeguards had been built into the directions. It noted that the judge had ensured the text to be read for the voice sample did not include any inculpatory portions from the disputed conversations and was limited strictly to words required for spectrographic comparison.
