Rights of the Accused — Article 20 — KSLU Constitutional Law Notes

Rights of the Accused — Article 20

When the State, with all its power, prosecutes an individual, the scales tip dangerously. Article 20 rebalances them with three shields that cannot be suspended even in an Emergency:

1. Ex-post facto law [20(1)] — no conviction under a law passed after the act, and no penalty greater than that prescribed when the act was done.
2. Double jeopardy [20(2)] — no one shall be prosecuted and punished for the same offence more than once (nemo debet bis vexari). Indian double jeopardy needs a prior prosecution and punishment before a court/judicial tribunal (Maqbool Hussain, 1953).
3. Self-incrimination [20(3)] — no person accused of an offence shall be compelled to be a witness against himself (nemo tenetur prodere seipsum).

Key line on 20(3): giving specimen handwriting, signatures and fingerprints is not “being a witness against oneself” — these are identification material, not testimony (State of Bombay v. Kathi Kalu Oghad, 1961). But compelled narco-analysis, polygraph and brain-mapping do violate Art. 20(3) (Selvi v. State of Karnataka, 2010); and the protection reaches the investigation stage (Nandini Satpathy, 1978).