Future of Forensic Labs: Government Forensic Labs versus Private Forensic Labs

Cases are piling up in Courts and one of the major cause of delay in delivering justice is delay in forensic investigation reports from forensic labs. In India, legal cases go to government (central forensic science laboratories and/ or state forensic science laboratories). Forensic labs cite the reason of delay to lack of trained manpower, space and infrastructure, which is true in most cases. The average number of cases handled by forensic scientist in India outnumber their counterpart worldwide. Hence most experts do not get time and opportunity to upgrade their knowledge which in turn again leads to further delay in execution of forensic investigation. Area like digital forensic is most neglected as most of forensic scientist dealing with such cases do not have educational background and in depth knowledge to handle such cases. Active research is declining as there is not time for research. The government forensic labs have equipments, which are lying unused as there are not enough skilled personnel's, who could use this expensive infrastructure, which is leading to slow death of government forensic labs in India.

I would like to draw a parallel here with health care system where many of private hospitals are able to deliver quality health care by optimally using their resources and by providing scope for research and knowledge upgrade to the employees.

I foresee that slow death of government forensic lab and pressure from judiciary and industry readiness will open the doors of opportunity for private forensic labs in India especially private digital forensic labs as the world is getting more and more connected and our dependency on technology is increasing on each passing day. We need experts who know their state of the art and carry out research to develop innovative, efficient and scalable solutions. this will also be in line with out National Cyber Security Policy 2013 as announced by Government of India. There has be a clear policy to monitor the working on private forensic labs. These private forensic labs need to meet highest level of standards to remain operational and law should allow them to be used in place of government forensic labs. This healthy competition will help both government and private forensic labs and thus society in general.