Karnataka: Staff crunch grips Forensic Science Lab; cases pile up

Close to 1,768 cases of mobile forensics, 1,037 cases of DNA Forensic, and 1,110 cases of audio video forensics have piled up at the State Forensic Science Laboratory(SFSL) over the last year, delaying the process of investigation of crimes in the state.

Forensic reports play a crucial role in the investigation of crimes and delays in obtaining the reports could stall the investigations, police personnel said.

“Over the years, we have moved from witness-based investigations to evidence-based investigations and the forensics reports play a crucial role. We await these reports before filing the final charge sheet,” a senior police official told DH.

However, he added that the SFSL had come a long way over the years and important cases are picked up on priority.

The officials from the SFSL attributed the pileup to a spurt in the number of cases.

“We always used to receive a huge number of samples for DNA forensics. With technological interventions, there has been a drastic increase in the samples received for mobile forensics and audio video forensics. We receive at least 70 samples of mobile forensics a month,” an official said.

DNA profiling helps in solving cases like the identification of individuals involved in rape, gang rape cases, murder cases, and unidentified bodies recovered during mass disasters and according to officials, there has been at least a ten-fold increase in such samples since 2008.

The audio-video forensics studies the media files to check for genuineness and also helps compare them with the samples of the suspect. The mobile forensics section analyses information stored in the mobile phone, SIM card, and memory card to extract digital data as evidence.

A forensic expert who works closely with the SFSL said that DNA analysis may have been delayed owing to a lack of enough samples. “In many cases, the identity of the body is not known and a comparison sample cannot be given for analysis. Also, in a few other cases, the sample is sent for DNA analysis only to ensure that they have some form of a sample if someone claims the body later,” an expert said.

However, sources in SFSL told DH that a huge staff crunch had made it difficult to analyse the samples sooner.

“There were close to 400 vacant posts a few months back and this had slowed down the process,” sources said. State Forensic Sciences Laboratory (SFSL) Director Dharmendra Kumar Meena said that they had recruited a large number of officers in August-September.

“The officers are being trained and once they start working at full potential, we will be able to clear the backlog fast,” he said.