Hyderabad, October 21: B Ramalinga Raju, the jailed founder-chairman of SatyamComputer Services, is not willingto go through the polygraph and brain mapping tests to be conducted by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).
“The investigating agency is trying to conduct the tests without seeking the consent of the accused. The accused have not given any consent to the investigators to conduct the tests,” senior advocate Prakash Reddy, arguing on behalf of Raju, said on Tuesday.
The CBI was earlier allowed by a lower court to conduct lie detector (polygraph) and brain mapping tests on Raju, his brother Rama Rajuand ex-CFO of Satyam Srinivas Vadlamani.
However, Raju petitioned in the high court challenging the lower court’s order. A single judge, who had heard the case, referred the matter to a division bench.
The bench of Justice A Gopal Reddy and Justice S Govindarjulu took up the case on Tuesday.
“There are several judgments staying or opposing the conduct of these tests. Moreover, these tests are being done with an intention of extracting information from the accused by force. This is in complete violation of the fundamental rights granted by the Constitution. The accused have the right to privacy and the provisions also say that the accused should not be compelled to stand as witnesses against themselves. The CBI’s attempt to conduct these tests on the accused is not acceptable and they should not allowed to go ahead without the consent of the accused,” Padmanabha Reddy, another senior advocating arguing for Raju, told the court.
However, additional solicitor general M Ravindran, appearing for the CBI, argued that there was no violation of fundamental rights in seeking the permission to conduct the tests.
“When the accused were arrested the court had granted the investigators to go ahead with the custodial interrogation under Section 167 of the CrPC. Even now, what CBI is trying to do is an extension of the custodial interrogation. If there was no fundamental rights violation in the initial interrogation, there can’t be any such violation while conducting these tests,” Ravindran argued.
The CBI counsel also pointed out that the stay orders on such tests by other courts earlier were given out by single judges and the Supreme Court had stayed cases involving narco analysis. “We are not trying to do a narco analysis on the accused,” he clarified.
However, the Raju counsel pointed out the National Human Rights Council’s guidelines on the conduct of polygraph test. The guidelines oppose the invasion of privacy in the name of polygraph.
Ravindran argued that “The foundation of the guidelines itself is faulty. The guidelines were made with an impression that the investigators would inject some chemical into the body of the accused. Polygraph is a non-invasive technique and it is completely scientific.”
The court would continue to hear the case on Wednesday.
-Agencies