Among the WikiLeaks is a US embassy diplomatic cable decrying India?s weak forensics and its accompanying reliance on confessions?often obtained through threats and torture?to pursue investigations. As much as one would like to dismiss this claim as hearsay, if we go by the example of the high-profile Aarushi Talwar double murder case, it is evident that the lacunae in our forensic capabilities are more real than imagined. After CBI has filed its closure report on the two-year old case, a close look at how technology props were more misused rather than used indicates that there is a systemic forensic malaise stalking our crime walks.

Fingerprinting

A Fingerprint Bureau was established in Kolkata in 1897, pre-empting Scotland Yard?s Fingerprint Branch that was set up only in 1901. Two years later, Sherlock Holmes was stalking out this clue in The Norwood Builder. More than a century later, even lay people know that as soon as a murder is discovered, concerned authorities must sanitise the crime scene to preserve fingerprints and other evidence from contamination. The director of the National Crime Record Bureau (NCRB) NK Tripathi has said that if the fingerprints in the Talwar case had been gathered and analysed properly, it would have yielded a different result. But a local police that failed to preserve bloodstains, footprints, bedsheets, etc, as part of an overall failure to preserve the sanctity of the crime scene, would do no better with the fingerprints. Of the 26 of these that were lifted during the initial investigation, only two would make it intact through the chain of custody. These were found on the surface of a Scotch bottle, but neither the police nor CBI could ever match these to any suspects.

Given that the failure to preserve the fingerprints was one in a series of failures to preserve evidence, it is natural that this too has fed into the conspiracy narrative. But the unfortunate fact is that such failures take place with more regularity than one would be comfortable with. Sometimes lifted through wrong methods, sometimes gathered with wrong materials, sometimes mismanaged down the road, our police continues to act like amateur finger-printers even after more than a century of practice.

Polygraphs & narcoanalysis

Following military experiments through the First World War, the polygraph machine was invented in 1921 in the US. Today, it is part of the powerful CSI effect. Thanks to crime films and TV dramas, as American criminologist Monica Robbers puts it, lay people have come to ?hold unrealistic expectations of forensic evidence and investigation techniques?. Lay people have come to believe that the polygraph test is a necessary and indubitable component of criminal investigation and prosecution. The police and CBI should know better. The US National Academy of Sciences has found that while the polygraph ?may have some utility?, there is ?little basis for the expectation that a polygraph test could have extremely high accuracy?. In the UK, polygraphs are used only to prompt investigations rather than to determine guilt. Evidence of high probability of ?false positives? has been pouring in from elsewhere in the world as well.

In India, even as CBI and the police were polygraphing one suspect after another and repeatedly holding out promises that the tests would clinch the case, the judiciary had to step in to give voice to science and sanity. The Supreme Court found that even when the subject had given consent to procedures like the polygraph test, the test results by themselves could not be admitted as evidence because ?the subject does not exercise conscious control over the responses during the administration of the test?, violating the right against self-incrimination. The apex court did grant that ?any information or material that is subsequently discovered with the help of voluntary administered test results can be admitted, in accordance with Section 27 of the

Evidence Act?. And it said categorically that ?no individual should be forcibly subjected to any of the techniques in question, whether in the context of investigation in criminal cases or otherwise. Doing so would amount to an unwarranted intrusion into personal liberty?.

Aarushi?s parents were subjected to polygraph tests and narcoanalysis repeatedly. They even cooperated. In the case of other suspects like servant Krishna, the correctness of consent has been questioned. Sympathisers say that Krishna had been made to sign a blank paper and did not really understand its significance. Either ways, neither the police nor CBI were able to build on the test results to get a rock-solid case against any of their various suspects.

DNA analysis

A last-minute red herring that CBI threw up as it was filing its closure report was the touch DNA. This relates to one palm print found outside the terrace of the Talwar house. Now, some see touch DNA or low copy number DNA as the next frontier in crime detection, as it allows for profiles to be obtained from very small samples. Our forensic people don?t have this expertise; the few foreign facilities that can provide it reportedly charge a lot. Let?s put this plaint against the backdrop of everything that went wrong in the Talwar case. For example, Aarushi?s vaginal swab was switched with that of an unidentified person. Her mobile phone was recovered but not its memory. Her original autopsy report was lost. There were mock drills held but these would not nail any crime scenario convincingly, conclusively. Given the missteps on the known path, what are the odds that the unknown one would have let to the goalpost? When the material evidence that was found went missing or got tampered with, when those who did the tampering were never named, what?s the point of looking at airy clue castles whose keys we don?t have?

Conviction rate

Remember, like tests related to fingerprints, polygraphs and narcoanalysis, those related to DNA analysis are all about probability rather than absolute certainty. The probability has to be backed by good old-fashioned police work. Otherwise, it yields no prosecutions, let alone convictions. A durable theme of today?s TV dramas, films and fiction may be how DNA evidence can help solve cold cases. For similar reasons, DNA databases in countries like the US and the UK may be on an expansive march. And there is no question that the technology has been improving by leaps and bounds. But it has a range of error, which is why most international jurisdictions restrict it in select ways. Technology can?t be the gold standard of police work in and of itself. Nobody can blame the 38.4% murder conviction rate in 2008 (the last year for which NCRB data is available) on technology shortfalls alone.

Even as the Talwar case was winding up, the Medical Council of India announced that it would be slashing the requirement of qualified forensic teaching faculty across 300 medical colleges by one-thirds. This is obviously a disturbing development, given that today we have untrained doctors doing autopsies, sub-standard laboratories doing DNA testing, second-rate experts offering opinions to investigating agencies and so on.

To quote the CSI effect from the other side, today?s criminals know all about wearing gloves. That?s how ?educated? they have become. The Talwar case, with all its high-profile attention, shows that our criminal investigation authorities are woefully ill-educated by contrast. From the basics of forensic science to the PhD stuff, they got it all wrong in this instance. Fixing it all would take time and attention. Awaiting that fix, the least they could do is to stop ?hanging? people without a trial. As Aarushi?s father?s brother told a TV channel back in 2008, ?In a country that?s marching towards superpowerdom, this could happen. It?s disbelief.?