Published on: January 4, 2022
ARTICLE 20 OF INDIAN CONSTITUTION
ARTICLE 20 OF INDIAN CONSTITUTION
NEWS
The Kalaburagi bench of the high court has said that drawing of the blood sample of an accused to determine the paternity of the child is neither self-incrimination nor violative of Article 20 (3) of the Constitution.
ABOUT ARTICLE 20
- Taken care to safeguard the rights of persons accused of crimes.
- Persons here means the citizens, non-citizens as well as corporations.
- This article cannot be suspended even during an emergency in operation under article 359.
- Constitutes the limitation on the legislative powers of the Union and State legislatures.
COMPONENTS
Ex-Post facto Law
- No person shall be convicted of any offence except for violation of a law in force at the time of the commission of the Act
- Legislature cannot make a law which provides for punishment of acts which were committed prior to the date when it came into force
- New law cannot punish an old act.
Doctrine of Double Jeopardy
- No person shall be prosecuted and punished for the same offence more than once.
- Aims to avoid harassment, which must be caused for successive criminal proceedings, where the person has committed only one crime.
Self-Incrimination Law
- No person accused of any offence shall be compelled to be a witness against himself.
- Based upon a legal maxim which means that No man is bound to accuse himself.
- Accused is presumed to be innocent till his guilt is proved
- Duty of the prosecution to establish his guilt.
CONCEPTS :
DNA SAMPLING
- Testing used for the purpose of verifying the identity of an unknown person.
- Commonly used in criminal investigations for the purpose of identifying suspects to a crime
- Also common in other areas of law, such as paternity testing.
- Work by extracting a sample of DNA from the suspect under investigation.
- Samples may be obtained by a variety of methods, including fingerprint samples, “swab” samples obtained from inside the cheek, or bodily fluid samples (such as blood).
- The DNA samples are taken directly from the person in question.