Court grants permission to Delhi police to take voice sample of suspected LeT operative

Police needed to compare sample of the accused to the to intercepted conversations received from IB

A court here has allowed Delhi Police to take voice sample of a suspected Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) operative, who was arrested from Mewat region of Haryana in December last year.

The special cell of Delhi Police moved a plea before Additional Sessions Judge Daya Prakash claiming Intelligence Bureau (IB) had intercepted the conversations between arrested accused Rashid and Javed Baluchi, a LeT terrorist currently based in Pakistan.

The police also said they have received the intercepted conversations between Rashid and Baluchi from the IB and they need to take the voice sample of the accused to compare the two.

"A letter was sent to IB, the source of input to provide the voice of accused Rashid intercepted by them during the conversation with Javed Baluchi, a LeT terrorist based in Pakistan. The same has been received.

"The intercepted conversation is to be compared with that (voice) of accused Rashid and for this purpose voice sample of accused Rashid is to be taken," the special cell said.

The police also requested the court to issue direction to Director, CFSL/CBI, "for obtaining the voice sample of accused Rashid, who is in judicial custody."

Advocate M S Khan, who appeared for Rashid, opposed the plea saying there were no provision in the CrPC to take the voice sample of an accused and the law is not settled on this issue.

Khan said Rashid was in custody of special cell for almost a month and claimed that police was trying to falsely implicate him in the case.

The court, however, allowed the plea of the police.

Rashid was arrested on December 16 last year in connection with the case while co-accused Shahid was arrested on December 7, with the police claiming to have busted a terror module of LeT which was at an "advanced stage" of planning a militant strike in Delhi.