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.
