Forensic tools draw sleuths to Bangalore

BANGALORE: An anaesthetic that forces criminals to spill the beans, an electrical device that can fish for traces of a crime in the mind of a suspect, and the good old lie-detector are drawing policemen from all over the country to Karnataka.
The latest one queuing up is the Special Investigation Team of the Maharashtra police, which is pursuing the stamp paper trail.
On Monday, a Pune court granted the SIT permission to conduct ‘narcoanalysis, brain fingerprinting and polygraph tests'' on nine of the prime accused in the stamp paper scam, including Abdul Karim Telgi, his brother, his lawyer and associates.
The Forensic Science Laboratory in Bangalore happens to be the only one in the country providing all three of these cutting edge forensic tools.
Over the past two years, since these forensic tools were introduced, the lab has seen CBI officials from all over the country, the Tamil Nadu, Kerala Gujarat and Maharashtra police avail the services, apart from the Karnataka police, says Dr Malini, the forensic psychologist who handles the tests.
"The Maharashtra SIT wants to use the Bangalore FSL for these tests because we are the only ones providing all three. We have standardised procedures and also had tremendous success," she says.
Narcoanalysis involves injecting suspects with a carefully regulated dose of the anaesthetic sodium pentothal — also known as the ‘truth serum''.
"The anaesthetic lulls suspects into a semi-stupor and when questioned under this condition, they usually reveal the truth," says an anaesthetist at Victoria Hospital, where the FSL carries out these tests.
The truth serum, when used on a Veerappan aide, helped the Karnataka police establish the brigand''s links with people like Kolathur Mani.
Brain fingerprinting or the ‘P-300 tests'' is a psychological tool used to elicit information hidden away — consciously or unconsciously — in the brain of a suspect. Experts at the Bangalore FSL have carried out this test on nearly 90 persons so far.
The polygraph is the lie detector which is more commonly available across the country.
On Tuesday, a SIT official was at the lab to draw up the logistics of conducting these tests on the accused. "It is not that we do not have sufficient evidence. By using these tests, we want to ensure that ‘doodh ka doodh aur pani ka pani ho jaye''," said an SIT official.