A grieving father, dissatisfied with a stalled investigation into his daughter’s death, asked the courts to order a narco analysis test on the accused, in the hope that science might yield the truth that years of investigation had not. The Delhi High Court was sympathetic to the loss, and to the victim’s own right to a fair investigation, but held that the law does not permit it. The Supreme Court, in Selvi, has held that no one may be subjected to narco analysis without consent, because compelled testimony of that kind violates the right against self-incrimination. An accused who has declined the test cannot be forced to take it, whatever the gravity of the case or the anguish of the complainant.
New Delhi: The Delhi High Court has dismissed a petition by the father of a deceased victim seeking a direction for the conduct of a Narco Analysis Test on the accused in the case relating to his daughter’s death, holding that accused persons who have categorically declined to consent cannot be compelled to undergo the test [Pappu Singh v. State NCT of Delhi].
Justice Purushaindra Kumar Kaurav, exercising jurisdiction under Article 227 of the Constitution read with Section 528 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023, declined to interfere with the concurrent orders of the trial court and the revisional court refusing the direction.
The background
The petitioner is the father of the deceased, a 21-year-old woman, in connection with whose death an FIR was registered in 2017 under Sections 365, 302, 174A and 34 of the Indian Penal Code. According to the status report, the victim had gone missing in November 2017, following which the FIR was registered on the suspicion voiced by the petitioner against certain persons. Dissatisfied with the progress of the investigation, the petitioner, and not the Investigating Officer, moved an application before the trial court seeking a direction for a narco analysis test on the accused, along with a status report.
The accused persons, through counsel, recorded statements that they did not wish to undergo the test. The trial court, holding that the test could not be enforced upon them, dismissed the application; the Additional Sessions Judge, in revision, affirmed that view, holding both that the application ought to have been moved by the Investigating Officer rather than the complainant, and that, following Selvi v. State of Karnataka, the compulsory administration of such techniques violates the right against self-incrimination. The petitioner then approached the High Court.
The Selvi bar on involuntary testing
The Court anchored its decision in the three-Judge Bench decision of the Supreme Court in Selvi, which held that the involuntary administration of narco analysis, polygraph examination and the Brain Electrical Activation Profile test is unconstitutional. The involuntary administration of such tests, the Court reiterated on the authority of Selvi, contravenes the protection under Article 20(3) of the Constitution against self-incrimination, and conducting them without consent violates the standard of substantive due process and constitutes an unwarranted intrusion upon personal liberty.
The petitioner had argued that, since the offence was committed within the confines of a room and eyewitnesses were virtually non-existent, every scientific tool ought to be resorted to, and that the accused’s consent was immaterial given the gravity of the offence. The Court held that this argument could not be accepted: the consent contemplated in Selvi is a genuine, voluntary consent, and an accused who has categorically declined to undergo the test cannot be directed to do so at the instance of the complainant, the very compulsion the constitutional protection forbids.
The victim’s right to a fair trial
The Court did not dismiss the petitioner’s invocation of the victim’s rights lightly. Drawing on the Supreme Court’s observations in Zahira Habibulla H. Sheikh v. State of Gujarat, the petitioner had submitted that a fair trial embraces not only the liberty of the accused but also the interest of the victim and society, and that a fair investigation is an incident of a fair trial. The Court accepted the proposition as unexceptionable, and expressed its sympathy for a father who had seen his daughter so brutally done to death.
But the victim’s right to a fair trial under Article 21, however weighty, could not, the Court held, be pressed to a point that overrides the accused’s constitutional protection against compelled self-incrimination. Where the two are in tension, the settled position laid down in Selvi, and reiterated in Amlesh Kumar, is that the accused cannot be compelled; the remedy for a stalled or inadequate investigation lies in the petitioner’s entitlement to a fair investigation, which the Court noted he could pursue, and not in coercing the accused into a test the Constitution shields them from. On that reasoning, the Court found no infirmity in the concurrent orders and disposed of the petition.
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Why it matters
The decision reaffirms a bright-line rule that Selvi laid down and that lower courts must apply even in the most sympathetic cases. Narco analysis and similar techniques cannot be administered to an unwilling person, because to extract information from a person by chemically or otherwise overriding their volition is to compel self-incrimination, which Article 20(3) forbids, and to intrude upon the mental privacy and personal liberty that substantive due process protects. Consent is the pivot: a person may volunteer for such a test, with safeguards, but cannot be conscripted into one, and a categorical refusal is the end of the matter.
What gives the case its poignancy is that the demand came not from the State but from a bereaved father, and was resisted not on grounds of the accused’s guilt or innocence but on the accused’s constitutional shield. The Court’s answer, that the victim’s undoubted right to a fair trial and investigation cannot be converted into a right to compel the accused’s self-incrimination, marks the limit of the victim-centred jurisprudence the petitioner invoked. Fairness to the victim is a real and enforceable value, but it operates through a fair and diligent investigation, not through the coercion of the accused.
The order also draws a quieter procedural line, noted by the courts below, that an application for such a scientific test ordinarily lies at the instance of the Investigating Officer, in whom the responsibility for investigation vests, rather than the complainant. For a petitioner troubled by the pace of an investigation now years old, the Court’s indication that the appropriate remedy is the right to a fair investigation, capable of being pursued through the mechanisms the law provides, points to where such a grievance is properly addressed, even as the door to compelling the accused remains, under Selvi, firmly closed.
Case Title: Pappu Singh v. State NCT of Delhi [CRL.M.C. 2843/2026]
Bench: Justice Purushaindra Kumar Kaurav, High Court of Delhi at New Delhi
Date of Decision: September 17, 2026
Appearances: Advocates Shivsahay and Mukesh for the petitioner; Additional Public Prosecutor Naresh Kumar Chahar, with Advocate Khusbu Pandey, for the State.
Status: Petition disposed of. Concurrent orders refusing a direction for the Narco Analysis Test upheld; accused who have declined consent cannot be compelled, following Selvi.