Najeeb missing case: Court rejects CBI plea for polygraph test on JNU students

A city court on Tuesday rejected CBI’s plea seeking to conduct lie-detection test on nine students in connection with the disappearance of another Jawaharlal Nehru University student Najeeb Ahmed.

A city court on Tuesday rejected CBI’s plea seeking to conduct lie-detection test on nine students in connection with the disappearance of another Jawaharlal Nehru University student Najeeb Ahmed.

JNU student Najeeb Ahmed has been missing since October 15 last year. (HT FILE PHOTO)

The court said that the CBI plea cannot be allowed at this stage as the polygraph test cannot be done without the consent of the person on whom the test has to be done. Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Samar Vishal said the students’ reply clearly reflects they are not willing to take the test.

The court pointed out National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) guidelines which suggest that such a test is prerogative of the individual and not the police or investigating agency.

However the court said that the students can choose to volunteer for the polygraph test whenever they feel convenient.

In the previous hearing, the students’ counsel Vishwa Bhushan Arya and Ujjwal Kumar had requested the court to dismiss the Central Bureau of Investigation plea. They said that, as per the guidelines of the NHRC, the polygraph test is not authorised by law and must be regarded as illegal unless it is voluntarily accepted.

The CBI plea came after the Delhi high court asked the agency to seek early hearing in the trial court, which had earlier adjourned the matter for January 2018.

JNU student Ahmed has been missing since October 15 last year. The case was initially probed by the local police. Later a special investigation team (SIT) was formed, before the Crime Branch took over the case. The Delhi HC handed over the investigation to the CBI on May 16.

The agency then approached the trial court seeking early hearing of its plea seeking consent of the students for a polygraph test. Last week, the CBI in a status report filed at a city court, a Delhi police witness had turned hostile. The witnesses, an auto rickshaw driver who had claimed to have dropped Ahmed to the Jamia Milia Islamia campus on the day he went missing, reportedly told CBI that he had given the statement under duress.