The accused's right to silence during the pre-trial inquiry and the voluntary nature of the questionnaire under the Prevention of Corruption Act.

1. The petitioner prays for issuance of Writ in the nature of Writ of Certiorari to quash the questionnaire dated 11.03.2012 send to the petitioner, thereby seeking information from the petitioner in the pending Criminal Case.

2. The petitioner is the Deputy General Secretary to the DMK party and a sitting MLA elected from the Katpadi Assembly Constituency.

3. The petitioner was Minister for Public Works Department and Law during the period 2006 to 2011.

4. The case of the petitioner is that to wreak vengeance against the important functionaries of the DMK Party, the ruling AIADMK Government has foisted several cases of land grabbing, but as the case of the land grabbing could not be slapped against petitioner therefore a case has been registered under the Prevention of Corruption Act on the ground, that the petitioner possesses the assets dis-proportionate to known source of income.

5. The case has been registered against the petitioner vide Crime.No.17 of 2011, under Section 13(2) r/w. 13(1) (d) of the prevention of Corruption Act. After the registration of the case, searches were conducted at his residence and the business premises of the son of the petitioner, but, no documents in support could be collected.

6. The submission of the petitioner is, that having failed to get any supporting material, the questionnaire has been sent to him with 66 questions asking him to answer the questions, to collect evidence against the petitioner.

7. The petitioner challenged the impugned questionnaire on the ground of, it being violative of the Constitutional guarantee enshrined under Article 20(3) of the Constitution of India, as it amounts to compelling an accused to be a witness against himself.

8. The learned Senior counsel for the petitioner, in support of this contention, placed reliance on the judgment of the Hon'ble Supreme Court, in 2010 (7) Supreme Court Cases 263, (Selvi and others Vs. State of Karnataka), wherein it has been held that:

"99.) The practice of requiring the accused persons to narrate or contest the facts on their own corresponds to a prominent feature of an inquisitorial system i.e. the testimony of the accused is viewed as the "best evidence" that can be gathered. The premise behind this is that innocent persons should not be reluctant to testify on their own behalf. This approach was followed in the inquisitional procedure of the ecclesiastical courts and had thus been followed in other Courts as well. The obvious problem with compelling the accused to testify on his own behalf is that an ordinary person lacks the legal training to effectively respond to suggestive and misleading questioning, which could come from the prosecutor or the Judge. Furthermore, even an innocent person is at an inherent disadvantage in an environment where there may be unintentional irregularities in the testimony. Most importantly the burden of proving innocence by refuting the charges was placed on the defendant himself. In the present day, the inquisitorial conception of the defendant being the best source of evidence has long been displaced with the evolution of adversarial procedure in the common law tradition.

100.) Criminal defendants have been given protections such as the presumption of innocence, right to counsel, the right to be informed of charges, the right of compulsory process and the standard of proving guilt beyond reasonable doubt among others. It can hence be stated that it was only with the subsequent emergence of the "right to counsel" that the accused's "right to silence" became meaningful. With the consolidation of the role of the defence lawyers in criminal trials, a clear segregation emerged between the testimonial function performed by the accused and the defensive function performed by the lawyer. This segregation between the testimonial and defensive functions is now accepted as on essential feature of a fair trial so as to ensure a level playing field between the prosecution and the defen