Bengaluru: Some of the top forensic scientists of the country will attend a two-day 'National Conference on Emerging Trends in Forensic Science' at the Nimhans Convention Centre in the city beginning on Thursday to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Directorate of Forensic Science Laboratories, Bengaluru, Karnataka (DFSL). The conference has been organised by the police department and is the first national conference on forensic science to be held in Karnataka.
The topics that will be covered include the role of DNA profiling in cases of child abuse, sexual assault and human identification, confronting rape and sexual violence, trends in cyber forensics, trends in the use of improvised explosive devices and their forensic investigation followed in various FSLs and emerging methods in neuropsychological forensic investigation.
The DFSL, Bengaluru has come a long way since its inception in 1967 and has been in the forefront in detecting complex criminal cases of national importance with its scientific investigation and reports. "It is ranked the sixth best forensic science laboratory in the country and was recently awarded the Examiner of Electronic Evidence (EEE) certificate under Section 79 (A) of the IT Act by the Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology, Government of India," said Additional Director General of Police, Crime & Technical Services M.A. Saleem.
With cyber forensics posing a grave challenge to law enforcement agencies, the government has sanctioned Rs 5 crore to set up a state-of-the-art cyber forensic laboratory in the FSL, Madiwala campus.
Established with the order of the then Government of Mysore (No.HD89PEG) which was issued on June 5, 1963, the Karnataka FSL came into existence four years later; on August 1, 1967 with five sections.
The laboratory has come a long way since then with five Regional FSLs, which have been set up in the state, at Davangere, Mangaluru, Kalburgi, Belagavi and Mysuru. The numbers of cases that have been referred to FSL have gone up from 13,457 in 2011 to 18,916 as on October 2018.
"The state government is planning to expand the FSL as the Karnataka Forensic Science and Technology Centre to provide quality, timely and credible forensic services. The government has earmarked Rs 30 crore in the Budget, of which Rs12 crore has already been released and work is in progress," Mr Saleem said.
From the infamous IISc terrorist attack in 2005 to the Church Street blast in 2105, FSL has provided invaluable forensic leads to the city police and the National Investigation Agency. In the recent past, the ballistic reports sent by the FSL in the two high-profile assassination cases, of Kannada litterateur Prof. M.M. Kalburgi and editor-activist Gauri Lankesh nailed the killers. The ballistic reports stated that the same contraband 7.65mm pistol was used in the two murders. In December 2013, the DNA Centre at the FSL had helped in identifying the 27 passengers, who were charred to death when one of the AC coaches of Bengaluru-Nanded in which they were travelling train had caught fire accidentally near Anantapur in Andhra Pradesh.
