The first thing to understand about a parade is what it is for. It is not the evidence on which a person is convicted. The substantive evidence is the identification made by the witness in the witness box at the trial. The parade held during the investigation is corroborative: it tests, at a time close to the incident, whether the witness can in fact pick the person out. That is why the conditions under which it is held matter so much, and why a badly held parade damages the prosecution more than it damages the accused.
Who directs it
The Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023 provides that where a person is arrested on a charge of committing an offence and his identification by another person is considered necessary for the purposes of the investigation, the Court having jurisdiction may, on the request of the officer in charge of a police station, direct the person so arrested to subject himself to identification by any person or persons in such manner as the Court may deem fit. Where the identifying witness is mentally or physically disabled, the identification is to take place under the supervision of a Magistrate, who is to ensure the witness identifies using methods that person is comfortable with, and the process is to be recorded by audio-video electronic means.
Can you refuse
This is where people are commonly misled. Article 20(3) of the Constitution protects a person accused of an offence from being compelled to be a witness against himself, but the Supreme Court held in 1961 that giving a specimen signature, handwriting, or a thumb impression is not testimonial compulsion and is not hit by that protection. The same reasoning applies to showing your face. So a refusal to stand in a parade is not an exercise of the right against self-incrimination. There is no separate punishment prescribed for refusal, but a refusal without an explanation is something a trial court is entitled to take into account against you, and in practice it usually is. The better course, almost always, is to participate and to insist on the safeguards, because a parade held properly and producing a wrong identification is worth more to you than no parade at all.
The parade should be conducted by a Magistrate and not by the investigating officer. You should be mixed with persons of broadly similar age, height, build, complexion and dress. The witnesses should not have seen you at the police station, in a vehicle, in handcuffs, or in a photograph before the parade. Witnesses should be kept apart and brought in one at a time. Note the number of persons in the line, where you were placed in it, whether you were asked to change position between witnesses, who was present, and how long it took. Ask for the memorandum to record any objection you make, at the time you make it.
Measurements are a separate power
Photographs, fingerprints and other measurements are governed by the Criminal Procedure (Identification) Act, 2022 rather than by the parade provision. Under it, a person who has been convicted, or ordered to give security for good behaviour, or arrested in connection with an offence or detained under a preventive detention law, shall if so required allow his measurements to be taken by a police officer or a prison officer in the prescribed manner. There is a proviso: a person arrested for an offence other than one against a woman or a child, or one punishable with imprisonment of not less than seven years, may not be obliged to allow the taking of biological samples. On the record keeping side, measurements are retained in digital form for seventy five years, but where a person who has not previously been convicted is released without trial, discharged or acquitted after exhausting all legal remedies, the records are to be destroyed unless the court directs otherwise for reasons recorded in writing. That destruction is worth applying for; it does not always happen on its own.
Separately, a Magistrate of the first class may order a person, including an accused, to give specimen signatures, finger impressions, handwriting or a voice sample, ordinarily where the person has at some time been arrested in connection with the investigation, though the Magistrate may order it without arrest for reasons recorded in writing.
What to do afterwards
- Write down everything you noticed, the same day. Who else was in the line, what they looked like, whether anyone had seen you earlier, and any irregularity.
- Tell your advocate immediately, before the memorandum is filed, so that objections can be taken at the right time.
- Get the parade memorandum when the magistrate furnishes copies of the police report and the accompanying documents to the accused, and compare it with your note.
- Keep the point for cross-examination. A parade held after the witness has already seen the accused, or with a line of dissimilar persons, is a point that lands at trial rather than at the investigation stage, and our note on how contradictions in prosecution evidence produce an acquittal explains how that works.
Where it fits in the larger case
A parade is one link, and it rarely decides anything on its own. If you are facing an accusation you say is false, the parade is a detail inside a bigger problem, and our note on the remedies open to a person falsely accused deals with the whole of it. Where the case should not have been registered at all, our guide on how a first information report is quashed sets out that jurisdiction and, importantly, its limits.