JOIN USThe Supreme Court on Monday asked the Centre to confirm if it could consider preparing a data bank containing DNA profiles of the unidentified dead bodies, in view of pendency of the Human DNA Profiling Bill.
A bench of justices Dipak Misra and S A Bobde noted that creation of such a data bank would help in identifying missing persons. The court gave additional solicitor general N K Kaul four weeks to file an affidavit in this regard.
Hearing a PIL filed by NGO Lokniti Foundation, the court took on record a plea made by Kaul that the bill for DNA profiling at present was held up due to privacy concerns raised by certain experts and NGOs and those concerns were being addressed by an expert committee set up by the department of biotechnology.
The bench said that at this juncture without getting into the merit of the bill, “we would like to have take Centre’s view” whether the department of biotechnology could create a data bank of unidentifiable dead persons and whether the DNA profiles from siblings of missing persons could be collected to match with the unidentified bodies.
The court passed its order after the NGO counsel submitted that the bill was pending for the last seven to eight years. The court put the matter for further consideration on October 27.