Bill to collect blood, DNA of convicts gets Assembly nod

The Legislative Assembly on Friday passed the Identification of Prisoners (Karnataka Amendment) Bill to collect blood, DNA and other forensic samples of convicts.

At present, only photographs, fingerprints and footprints of convicts are collected. The government seeks to add blood samples, DNA samples, voice and iris scans as part of the prisoner identification system.

The Bill empowers the Superintendent of Police (SP) or the Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP) to collect the samples, in addition to a magistrate.

This change has been brought in to save time and reduce the workload on the Judiciary, according to the Bill. "Earlier, the samples were collected from those who were sentenced to jail time of over one year. Now, samples will be collected from those sentenced to imprisonment for more than a month," Home Minister Araga Jnanendra said.

The plan to collect Iris and blood samples drew criticism from some MLAs who raised concerns about privacy of prisoners. "The government must specify whether or not under trials will be included in this. There is no reason for the government to collection so many details for undertrials. It is a violation of privacy," Congress MLA Priyank Kharge said.

The government must ensure that all these samples are taken only of habitual offenders, Hoskote MLA Sharath Bachegowda said.

Jnanendra specified that this system will be used only for convicts who have received more than a month's sentence. "The samples collected will be stored in the Criminal Tracking System that's in Bengaluru," he said.

The Assembly also passed the Code of Criminal Procedure (Karnataka Amendment) Bill.

This amendment will allow witness presentation through audio or video recording, in the presence of the advocate of the accused. "With this, the video conference facility will also be allowed in sessions court. For instance, a forensics expert will not have to travel from Bengaluru to some other place and it will save a lot of time," Jnanendra said, adding that this was a necessity in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Check out latest videos from DH: