The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : Expert questions the utility of narco-analysis

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Jul 12, 2006

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

Expert questions the utility of narco-analysis

Special Correspondent

CHENNAI: Forensic Science Society of India president P. Chandra Sekharan has urged the Union Government to constitute an experts committee of forensic scientists to decide whether "truth detecting techniques" should be used by police.

In a letter to the Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, he said the Government should take a policy decision on the police using narco-analysis and forensic scientists playing any role in conducting tests.

If necessary, the matter could be referred to the Supreme Court, he said.

Prof. Chandra Sekharan, a Visiting Professor at the National Law University, Jodhpur and a Guest Faculty, National Law School of India University, Bangalore, said that in the past few years, the police had been rushing to Bangalore along with the accused/suspects to conduct narco-analysis test in the Forensic Science Laboratory. Police in advanced countries realised that drugs were no more the answer to interrogation.

Abandoned

Almost all nations abandoned this test and condemned it as a "psychological third degree method."

Similarly, brain mapping was a premature technique, which would produce the same result if journalists, investigators, television watchers, newspaper readers and other witnesses who had knowledge about the crime were tested along with the perpetrator of the crime, he said.

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