Karnataka - Bangalore

`Set up committee to study use of tests in crime investigation'

Staff Reporter

Polygraph, brain mapping, narco analysis being done on conjecture: P. Chandra Sekharan

BANGALORE: Forensic scientist P. Chandra Sekharan has asked the Union Government to set up a committee of experts to decide about the use of truth detecting techniques — polygraph, brain mapping and narco analysis — by the police in the country. The committee should also specify whether forensic scientists had any role in conducting the tests, the scientist has said in a letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. Mr. Sekharan said the three tests were being done on conjecture, which sometimes coincided with some factual elements of the case. There was no forensic analysis involved in it.

"The Department of Forensic Sciences, functioning under the Union Home Ministry, extends full support to these `pseudo scientific' techniques. It wants all the States to start these techniques," Mr. Sekharan said.

He said in recent times, the police in the country were increasingly subjecting suspects of a crime to undergo the three tests. The polygraph test was done to measure reactions of a person's body to two sets of questions related to the crime. The brain mapping was done to measure brainwave responses to crime, relevant words or pictures. In narco analysis test, an anaesthetic drug called "thiopentone" or "sodium pentothal" was administered to a suspect by an anaesthetist in a hospital under the supervision of a doctor. When the suspect was in a "trance", the investigator recorded the confessions of the suspect.

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