Document Fragment View

Matching Fragments

(emphasis, added) Considered in this light, the guarantee under article 20(3) would be available in the present cases to these petitioners against whom a First Information Report has been recorded as accused therein. It would extend to any compulsory Process for production of evidentary documents which are reasonably likely to support a prosecution against them." [P. 1088] We have to apply this rule of construction, an off-shoot of the Heydon's case doctrinre, while demarcating the suspect and the sensitive area of self-crimination and the protected sphere of defensive. silence. If the police can interrogate to the point of self-accusation, the subsequent exclusion of that evidence at the trial hardly helps because the harm has been already done. The police will prove through other evidence what they have procured through forced confession. So, it is that the foresight of the framers has preempted self-incrimination at the incipient stages by not expressly restricting it to the trial stage in court. True, compelled testimony previously obtained is excluded. But the preventive blow falls also on pre-court testimonial compulsion. The condition, as the decisions now go, is that the person compelled must be an accused. Both precedent procurement and subsequent exhibition of self-criminating testimony are obviated by intelligent constitutional anticipation.