The Supreme Court of India in Nandini Satpathy Vs. P.L. Dani held that the accused Person cannot be forced to answer questions merely because the answers thereto are not implicative when viewed in isolation and confined to that particular case.
A bench comprising of Justice V.R. Krishna Iyer, Jaswant Singh and V .D. Tulzapurkar observed that he is entitled to keep his mouth shut if the answer sought has a reasonable prospect of exposing him to guilt in some other accusation actual or imminent, even though the investigation under way is not with reference to that.
In determining the incriminatory character of an answer, the accused is entitled to consider and the Court while adjudging will take note of the setting, the totality of circumstances, the equation, personal and social which have a bearing on making an answer substantially innocent but in effect guilty in import. However, fanciful claims, unreasonable apprehensions, and vague possibilities cannot be the hiding ground for an accused person. He is bound to answer where there is no clear tendency to criminate, the bench said.
A bench comprising of Justice V.R. Krishna Iyer, Jaswant Singh and V .D. Tulzapurkar observed that he is entitled to keep his mouth shut if the answer sought has a reasonable prospect of exposing him to guilt in some other accusation actual or imminent, even though the investigation under way is not with reference to that.
In determining the incriminatory character of an answer, the accused is entitled to consider and the Court while adjudging will take note of the setting, the totality of circumstances, the equation, personal and social which have a bearing on making an answer substantially innocent but in effect guilty in import. However, fanciful claims, unreasonable apprehensions, and vague possibilities cannot be the hiding ground for an accused person. He is bound to answer where there is no clear tendency to criminate, the bench said.
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