THE Supreme Court's directive to the Central Forensic Science Laboratory, New Delhi, to submit a report to it on the status of facilities available in various forensic science laboratories in the country and the kind of scientific support being extended to the investigating agencies in the matter of detection of crime is timely and welcome. A Bench consisting of Justice Markandey Katju and Justice T.S. Thakur has ruled that as the country does not have adequate forensic science laboratory facilities, investigations are poor and this, in turn, allows criminals to go scot- free. It said the situation in Western countries was quite the opposite when compared with India. In those countries, the authorities are able to make the best use of science and technology to investigate crimes. They also have hi-tech facilities to test the criminals' fingerprints, DNA, blood and so on. The reason why India lags behind in proper investigation in criminal cases is because of the authorities' failure to provide the investigators the necessary scientific training as also the equipment.
While the apex court directive is expected to goad the government to take steps to streamline this vital discipline, all is not well with forensic scientists in the country. They suffer from lack of resources, poor infrastructure, understaffing, absence of proper national policies and support. Because of the lack of vision, forensic science has failed to develop when compared to other disciplines of pure and applied sciences. More important, owing to poor infrastructure and bleak career prospects, the forensic science laboratories in the country seem unable to attract talent.
While it would be interesting to see what the Central Forensic Science Laboratory would report to the Supreme Court, the Union Government cannot overlook the imperative need to revitalise forensic science education in the universities to provide human resource to the forensic science laboratories. There is merit in the argument of some experts that these courses in the universities, instead of being run by police officials, should be entrusted to experts so that these institutions could be exposed to scientific culture, temper and vision.
