Himachal: Court gives permission to take voice samples of accused in scholarship scam

Himachal Pradesh: A CBI court in Chandigarh has accepted the CBI’s application to obtain voice samples from CBI DSP Balbir Singh and former assistant director of the Enforcement Directorate in Shimla, Vishal Deep, who have been arrested in connection with the alleged scholarship scam in Himachal Pradesh. CBI public prosecutor Narender Singh claimed that voices of the accused, including Vishal Deep and Balbir Singh, were recorded during the investigation and trap proceedings. To verify the identity of the voices in these recordings, sample voices of the accused are required for forensic analysis. The prosecutor further said that the accused were informed about the need to provide their voice samples for a fair investigation, but they had refused to cooperate.
Balbir Singh was the investigating officer in the scholarship scam case, which is now under CBI investigation. However, Vishal Deep’s defence lawyers argued that the voice recordings should not be considered as evidence in the case, claiming that the request violates the accused’s fundamental right to privacy. After considering the arguments, special judge Alka Malik said that since the case involves trap proceedings and recorded conversations, it is necessary to compare and analyse the voices using the samples of the accused. The court granted the CBI’s request, but ordered that the written text read by the accused for voice sample should not have the same sentence sequence as the disputed conversation, though the excerpts may contain some similar words. The CBI has registered an FIR against Vishal Deep on the basis of complaints from directors of two educational institutions under section 7 of the Prevention of Corruption Act. Earlier, the CBI had also sought a voice sample from Vishal Deep.