Indian police will no longer be allowed to inject suspects with “truth serums” after the Supreme Court ruled that the practice was unconstitutional.
The judgment will deprive investigators of a frequently used tool that critics said amounted to torture. It will also raise questions over the verdicts reached in dozens of murder cases where truth drugs were used.
A bench headed by Chief Justice K. G. Balakrishnan said yesterday that narcoanalysis, which involves a suspect being drugged with sodium pentothal and questioned, violates the Constitution, which says that “no person accused of any offence shall be compelled to be a witness against himself”.
Polygraphs and brain mapping, techniques in which a suspect’s brain activity is monitored electronically under questioning to decide whether he was present at a crime scene, were also deemed illegal.
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