Direction To Provide Voice Sample Does Not Violate Article 20(3) Of The Constitution Of India Or Right To Privacy

In Moin Akhtar Qureshi v. Central Bureau of Investigation (2025:DHC:11909), the Delhi High Court has clarified that a direction to furnish a voice sample for the purposes of criminal investigation does not amount to testimonial compulsion under Article 20(3) of the Constitution of India, nor does it violate the fundamental right to privacy. The Court held that providing a voice sample is merely a mode of identification and not a communication of personal knowledge or guilt, and therefore falls outside the constitutional protection against self-incrimination

The proceedings arose out of surveillance carried out by the Income Tax Department between October 2013 and March 2014, followed by search operations and subsequent action by the Enforcement Directorate and the CBI. During investigation, the CBI sought to compare intercepted telephonic conversations with the petitioner's voice. The courts below permitted this request, which the petitioner challenged before the High Court on the ground that the direction amounted to compelled self-incrimination and was premised on allegedly illegal and stale interceptions.

The Court rejected these arguments. Relying on settled precedent, it reaffirmed that physical and mechanical identification measures including fingerprints, handwriting, or voice samples do not carry any communicative content and therefore do not attract Article 20(3) of the Constitution. The Court clarified that self-incrimination means conveying information based upon the personal knowledge of the person, giving the information and cannot include merely the mechanical process of producing documents in Court, which may throw a light on any of the points in controversy and concluded that specimen through mechanical process, cannot be termed as a self-incriminatory attracting the prohibition of Article 20(3) of the Constitution. The Court emphasised that a voice sample is only an identifying feature of an individual and does not, by itself, establish guilt.

While dealing with one of the contentions of the petitioner regarding the absence of specific provision empowering the Magistrate to direct an accused to give voice sample, the Court relied upon the judgment of Supreme Court in Ritesh Sinha v. State of U.P., (2019) 8 SCC 1, wherein the Supreme Court, invoking Article 142, recognised the power of a Magistrate to direct a person to give a voice sample for the purpose of investigation under the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973. The Court also noted that this power now stands expressly incorporated in Section 349 of the Bhartiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023.

While acknowledging that the right to privacy is a fundamental right, the Court reiterated that it is not absolute and must yield to legitimate State interests, including the prevention and investigation of crime.

The Court further rejected the argument that intercepted calls were inadmissible or obtained contrary to statutory safeguards, holding that such objections pertain to evidentiary admissibility and must be adjudicated at the stage of trial, and cannot derail the investigative process.

Ultimately, the Court found no illegality or perversity in the Special Judge's order directing the petitioner to provide his voice sample, and upheld the same. The judgment reiterates that a voice sample constitutes a physical characteristic used solely for identification and comparison, does not involve disclosure of personal knowledge, and therefore is not hit by Article 20(3) of the Constitution.

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