Introduction
A witness cannot walk into an Indian courtroom, hear a question that would incriminate them, and simply decline to answer. That surprises people who assume Indian law mirrors the American "right to remain silent." It does not — at least not for witnesses. Section 137 forces the answer out, and then draws a careful, frequently misunderstood line around what the prosecution can do with it afterward.
Section 137 of the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam, 2023 (BSA) sits in Chapter IX ("Of Witnesses"), immediately before Section 138 on accomplice testimony, discussed in the previous article of this run. This piece explains how compulsion-plus-shield actually works, why the Supreme Court held in 2024 that the shield is far narrower than many litigants assume, and how it interacts with the constitutional privilege against self-incrimination that protects a different category of person entirely.
137. Witness not excused from answering on ground that answer will criminate.
A witness shall not be excused from answering any question as to any matter relevant to the matter in issue in any suit or in any civil or criminal proceeding, upon the ground that the answer to such question will criminate, or may tend directly or indirectly to criminate, such witness, or that it will expose, or tend directly or indirectly to expose, such witness to a penalty or forfeiture of any kind:
Provided that no such answer, which a witness shall be compelled to give, shall subject him to any arrest or prosecution, or be proved against him in any criminal proceeding, except a prosecution for giving false evidence by such answer.
Section 137 BSA and Section 132 IEA: Unchanged
Section 137 carries over from Section 132 of the Indian Evidence Act, 1872 without any alteration to its wording — the operative sentence and the proviso are identical in both statutes. That continuity matters because it means the substantial body of case law interpreting Section 132, including recent Supreme Court authority, transfers directly onto Section 137 without any argument that the new Act changed the rule.
| Aspect | Section 132, Indian Evidence Act, 1872 | Section 137, BSA, 2023 |
|---|---|---|
| Statutory text | Compels the answer; proviso shields the compelled answer from later use | Identical wording, unchanged |
| Who it protects | Any witness, not only the accused | Same — the section applies in "any suit or in any civil or criminal proceeding" |
| Governing precedent | Raghuveer Sharan v. District Sahakari Krishi Gramin Vikas Bank, 2024 INSC 681 | Continues to bind courts applying Section 137, since text and rationale are unchanged |
Compulsion, Not Silence: How the Shield Actually Works
The design here is deliberately different from a right to remain silent. Instead of letting a witness dodge a self-incriminating question, Section 137 compels the answer and then restricts what can be done with it afterward. The proviso does two specific things: it bars the compelled answer from being used to arrest or prosecute the witness, and it bars that answer from being proved against the witness in any criminal proceeding. The single carve-out is a prosecution for giving false evidence — a witness who lies while sheltering under this compulsion can still be prosecuted for that lie.
This is what lawyers call a use-immunity, not a blanket immunity. The witness cannot refuse to speak, but the specific words spoken under compulsion are walled off from being turned into the basis of a case against the speaker — with one narrow, important exception explained below.
The Supreme Court Narrows the Shield: Raghuveer Sharan (2024)
In Raghuveer Sharan v. District Sahakari Krishi Gramin Vikas Bank & Anr., 2024 INSC 681 (10 September 2024), the Supreme Court — a bench of Justices Prashant Kumar Mishra and Prasanna B. Varale — was asked whether the proviso's protection barred a witness who had made a self-incriminating statement from later being summoned as an additional accused under the equivalent of Section 319 of the old Code of Criminal Procedure. The Court held it did not, in every case. The proviso protects a witness from being prosecuted on the strength of that compelled answer alone — it does not confer blanket immunity where independent, substantial material already connects the witness to the offence. Where such independent evidence exists, a court can still summon that witness as an accused, and the earlier compelled statement is simply not the thing doing the work of implicating them.
A Different Protection for a Different Person: Article 20(3)
Section 137 is frequently confused with the constitutional privilege against self-incrimination in Article 20(3) of the Constitution, which provides that "no person accused of any offence shall be compelled to be a witness against himself." The two provisions protect different people at different moments. Article 20(3) belongs to a person who is already an accused — they cannot be compelled to testify against themselves at all. Section 137 belongs to a witness who is not (yet) an accused — that person can be compelled to answer, but receives the narrower use-immunity described above instead of an outright right to stay silent.
The Supreme Court addressed the boundary between these two positions in Nandini Satpathy v. P.L. Dani, (1978) 2 SCC 424, recognising that a person under police interrogation who faces a reasonable likelihood of becoming an accused can invoke a broader protection than an ordinary witness, even before formal charges are framed. Section 137's compulsion applies most cleanly to witnesses who are genuinely third parties to the matter, not to a person the investigation is already circling.
Worked Example One: The Shield Holds
A witness in a cheque-bounce prosecution is asked, under cross-examination, whether they personally altered a figure on a disputed document — an admission that would expose them to a forgery charge. No other evidence in the case links this witness to the alteration. Under Section 137, the witness must answer. But because no independent material implicates them, the proviso does its full work: that compelled admission cannot be used to arrest or prosecute the witness for forgery, and cannot be proved against them in a later criminal proceeding on that charge.
Worked Example Two: The Shield Does Not Hold
Now take a witness in a financial fraud trial who, under compulsion, admits to receiving a payment connected to the scheme — but investigators separately already possess bank transfer records and a co-conspirator's statement independently placing this witness inside the fraud. Following Raghuveer Sharan, the proviso does not shield this witness from being summoned as an accused, because the case against them does not rest on the compelled admission — it rests on the independent bank records and the other testimony. The compelled answer itself still cannot be proved against them, but the prosecution built on separate material can proceed regardless.
Not Just Criminal Trials: The Civil-Suit Reach of Section 137
The section's opening line applies it to "any suit or in any civil or criminal proceeding" — a reach that is easy to overlook if the discussion stays focused on criminal trials. A witness in a civil recovery suit who is asked whether they personally diverted funds from a partnership account cannot refuse to answer merely because that admission could later expose them to a criminal breach-of-trust charge or a regulatory penalty. Section 137 compels the same answer in that civil courtroom that it would compel in a criminal one, and extends the same use-immunity to it. This matters for regulatory and civil-recovery litigation as much as it does for criminal prosecutions, since a compelled admission in a civil deposition can otherwise feel, wrongly, like a safe space to be less than careful.
The false-evidence carve-out in the proviso is not an abstract label — it points to a real, separate offence. Giving false evidence is defined and punished under Sections 227 to 231 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023 (BNS), the direct successor to Section 191 of the Indian Penal Code. A witness who answers falsely under the shelter of compelled testimony is not protected by Section 137 at all for that false statement — the proviso's shield only ever covered a truthful, compelled, self-incriminating answer, never a lie told to escape the question's sting.
Why This Matters in Practice
For counsel preparing a witness who may face a self-incriminating question, Section 137 means the witness cannot be coached to dodge the question — refusal is not an option the law gives them. The real work is assessing, in advance, whether independent evidence already exists that would make any compelled admission largely irrelevant to the witness's own exposure, or whether the compelled answer would be the only thing tying them to wrongdoing, in which case the proviso's protection is doing real work. For investigators and prosecutors, Raghuveer Sharan confirms that building an independent evidentiary trail — rather than relying on what a witness says under compulsion — is what ultimately allows that witness to be pursued as an accused later, if the facts warrant it.
Key Takeaways
- Section 137 BSA carries over Section 132 IEA unchanged — a witness must answer a relevant question even if the answer is self-incriminating.
- The proviso grants use-immunity, not blanket immunity: the compelled answer cannot be used to arrest, prosecute, or prove a case against the witness, except for a prosecution for giving false evidence.
- Raghuveer Sharan v. District Sahakari Krishi Gramin Vikas Bank, 2024 INSC 681, confirms this protection does not block prosecution built on independent evidence that already connects the witness to the offence.
- Section 137 protects witnesses; Article 20(3) of the Constitution protects accused persons — the two operate at different stages and give different levels of protection.
- A witness who lies while sheltering under Section 137's compulsion remains exposed to prosecution for giving false evidence.
Conclusion
Section 137 trades a witness's silence for a narrower, more targeted protection — compel the truth, then wall off that specific truth from being weaponised against the person who gave it, unless independent evidence was already doing that work. The 2024 clarification in Raghuveer Sharan matters precisely because it prevents that narrow shield from being stretched into something the text never promised. The next article in this run turns from what a witness must say to what a party can be forced to hand over — the rules on producing documents that another person could otherwise have refused to disclose, under Section 136.