Mumbai: Anil Gote, incarcerated MLA and accused in the fake stamp paper scam, has moved Mumbai High Court challenging a special court's order, which allowed the special investigating team (SIT) to conduct P-300 brain-finger printing, lie detector and narco-analysis tests on him and eight other accused including prime accused Abdul Karim Telgi.

The petition, filed yesterday (Dec 29, 2003), will come up for hearing on January 6.

Earlier, the High Court had allowed SIT to perform scientific tests on Telgi, but restrained it from subjecting co-accused Ramchandra Rama Reddy to such tests, unless his petition challenging the December 15 order of special court in this regard was heard and disposed of.

Accordingly, Telgi underwent a lie detector test at a forensic lab at Bangalore on December 19.

Reddy had challenged the lower court order allowing the scientific tests on nine accused. The court had granted relief only to Reddy and posted the matter for admission on January 6. Gote is the second accused to challenge the order.

Gote argued that these tests involved injecting chemicals in the body and the accused could be forced to take them. He further said that the tests were violative of the Constitution, which laid down that an accused could not be forced to become a witness against himself.

The court had ordered tests on Telgi, Gote, Reddy, Anil Shah, Manoj Mehta, Dilip Kamath, Abdul Azim Telgi, Abdul Rashid Kulkarni and Dattatreya Dal.

Kamath and Dal are suspended cops while Gote is sitting MLA from Dhule. Rashid Kulkarni and Abdul Azim are lawyer and brother respectively of Telgi.