Revamping forensic science in India
T. R. BAGGI
In the backdrop of the Mumbai terror attack and similar attacks elsewhere in the country in the past, the security infrastructure is being reorganised, expanded and modernised to face challenges effectively. The benefits of improving, regulating and reorganising forensic science, which vitally assists the law enforcement agencies, enhances internal security, helps the criminal justice administration, reduces the risk of wrongful conviction/exoneration, seems to have been either overlooked or has not been properly prioritised.
Areas for improvement
All these years, forensic scientists all over the country have suffered from lack of adequate resources, poor infrastructure, understaffing, absence of proper national policies and support. Because of the improper vision, outlook and obsolete policies forensic science has failed to progress when compared to other disciplines of pure and applied sciences. Due to poor infrastructure and career prospects, the FSLs are not able to attract talented scientists. The forensic science education system in our universities has to be revitalised to provide human resource to the forensic science laboratories.
In a populous country like India, only two universities are offering, under UGC grants, masters and Ph.D. programmes. Analysts tell us that as these institutions for a long period of time historically have been under the control of police administration, were not exposed to scientific culture, temper and vision, for which reason, they could not progress like other scientific organisations.
There are several forensic institutions, all independently functioning with out coordination with each other and under different controlling agencies. Instead of fully utilising the strength of the FSLs optimally in a coordinated way, they have been used as mere formality of the legal procedure.
After a long struggle, some steps were recently taken to separate forensic science from police administration at the centre, by the establishment of the Department of Forensic Science. However, in many of the States, these institutions are still under the umbrella of police administration. Merely by separating administrative control we may not achieve anything if the basic policies remain the same. We cannot run laboratories like police stations.
The tremendous advances in basic and applied sciences have to be utilised for the development of forensic science. As per the law of unattainable triads, if forensic science is to be accurate and fast it cannot be cheap. The FSLs cannot be run on shoe lace budgets. These require sizable investment, commensurate with population and crime rate. We need to run forensic laboratories professionally on a sound scientific basis with an integrated organisational structure with complete coordination between various disciplines of forensic science in a meaningful manner.
Meaningful approach
Recognising a similar need, about two years ago, the U.S. Congress set up a high power committee with the help of the National Academy of Sciences on ‘Identifying the Needs of the Forensic Science Community’.
The committee, after serious deliberations with experts in diverse fields, is coming out with its recommendations entitled ‘Strengthening Forensic Science in United States – A Path Forward’ which will be published soon. It is high time the Ministry of Home Affairs, the government of India and the Department of Forensic Science studied the recommendations of the committee which are equally applicable to India, and take steps to fortify the discipline of forensic science.
The government should try to bring forensic science in the mainstream of science and technology. Sophisticated scientific methods involving frontier areas of science and technology, manned by highly qualified scientists are needed to solve high tech crimes.
The success of the exercise of revamping the security system depends on strong forensic evidence generated by serious field and laboratory work, which, when put before the courts of law in the country or any other international forums, would be able to prove the facts, guilt or innocence in an unequivocal manner as per the established norms of the criminal justice system.
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