How long can Investigations fail for lack of expertise

Its been a year since an innocent child, Naga Vaishnavi, was supposedly killed and body burnt in a furnace in Vijayawada, Andhra Pradesh, India. This was a sensation in February 2010 and the then Government of Andhra Pradesh went all out to arrest the culprits and jail them. The Hon'ble Home Minister too promised a Fast Track Trial in the case. Recent news was that the possibility of the case ending on a better note is doubtful since the charred remains of a body recovered from the furnace could not be conclusively established by DNA experts as that of the deceased child Vaishnavi. This, if true, is really sad since DNA technology is available to identify victims even if their bodies have got burnt beyond recognition. Police in Surrey UK, have identified the charred remains found in a Surrey ravine in November 2010 as those of 34-year-old Tara Lynn Westgarde. It makes us only wonder that if they can do why can't we? Frankly we can do better but our system of Governance does not allow it to happen.

We can't help drawing comparisons between Aarushi case and this Naga Vaishnavi case since both cases suffer from a common reason and that is 'lack of expertise' on part of prosecution experts. The experts need to realise that their lack of interest in their profession and disinclination to upgrade their working knowledge to the latest developments in the DNA field hampers investigations and lead to dismissal of prosecution of a true case against an accused person. Such developments leads to two fold disadvantage to the society at large. Firstly a criminal gets scot free and a potential killer is let off with a license to commit more heinous crimes on innocents. Secondly the confidence of the relatives of the victims on the Criminal Justice System and law of the land gets eroded due to such closure of the case to the benefit of the accused. Worse can also happen when Police investigating a Crime case may not collect evidence due to their lack of confidence on the DNA experts to give a conclusive evidence.

The expert's duty should be beyond fear or favor. Their are lessons which we need to learn from the 9/11 attack in New York. The attack on the World Trade Center on 9/11/2001 challenged the then current approaches to forensic DNA typing methods. The large number of victims and the extreme thermal and physical conditions of the site necessitated special approaches to the DNA-based identification. Because of these and many additional challenges, new procedures were created or modified from routine forensic protocols. This effort facilitated the identification of 1594 of the 2749 victims. I have always campaigned that in case we cannot develop something new, their is nothing wrong to adopt available technologies, after following due procedure, to reach to a conclusion. However the recent happenings so early this year of 2011 has made so called DNA experts to submit their less than helpful DNA reports without working much on polishing their DNA technologies to help the cases. This kind of approach on part of our DNA experts also points out to their lack of skills and expertise as otherwise a simple search of literature with such advanced technology being available in today's world with respect to searching and retrieving of information can solve so many problems. The DNA world today is boosted by statistical and technological advances such as DNA microarray sequencing, TFT biosensors, machine learning algorithms, in particular Bayesian networks, which provide an effective way of evidence organization and inference.

My call is that those experts processing such cases must consider the way in which to approach the analysis, and then carefully extract and organize samples accordingly, before they decide to give in their report which should benefit the Trier of Justice i.e., the Hon'ble Trial Court Judge. Yesterday it was Aarushi and today it is that of Naga Vaishnavi and tomorrow it could be of someone who is dear to any of us who may disappear from the memory of this World without getting due Justice. We should brace ourselves up so that this should not keep happening again and again and its time to rejuvenate the Forensic DNA System and we cannot allow such lack of expertise of the experts to hamper Criminal Case investigations.

DNA experts failed Aarushi and misled the CBI

This blog comes after convincing myself, that inappropriate advice and lack of direction from so-called DNA experts of the Centre for DNA Fingerprinting and Diagnostics or CDFD, Hyderabad has led CBI to get placed in such difficult state of affairs in the Aarushi Case. The foremost point of consideration is that the so-called experts were not experienced enough in Forensic DNA testing, but are qualified in Microbiology and Silk Worm Genetics and they do not possess any Forensic Science qualifications. (Read about their expertise at the link: http://cdfd.org.in/inside htmls/staff.html).Simply they are not aware that mixtures of DNA contamination need to be handled by experienced experts and not by any scientist just because he has read genetics. The CBI was grossly misled by the CDFD to believe that “TOUCH DNA TEST” would not be useful in coming to a conclusion. How did the CDFD realise that the samples in the Aarushi case were contaminated without actually testing the crime scene samples. It only goes to show that DNA experts just issued statements like politicians and walked away with it. Therefore CDFD to hide its inability to handle the case further misled CBI to believe that TOUCH DNA TEST would not yield results. The CDFD failed to update its knowledge and infrastructure in DNA Testing which could have helped to generate evidence in the Aarushi Case. I put forth an open challenge to DNA experts to an open debate on this subject because I am sure of my expertise and since I have used Touch DNA test before and its results were upheld by the Hon'ble Apex Court too.

Media reports regarding DNA tests done at Hyderabad reads "The CBI claim comes even as preliminary reports from Hyderabad's Centre for DNA Fingerprinting and Diagnostics, according to sources, suggested that identifying whose blood was on the T-shirt may or may not be possible. Doubts stem from the opinion of experts that separating DNA fingerprints from garment after so many days is not always possible, because red blood cells on the cloth start disintegrating".

(Read more at :The Times of India http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/delhi/CBI-still-has-no-real-proof-in-Aarushi-case/articleshow/3251910.cms#ixzz1Ac9uNYBl)

Nothing can be more unintelligent than this. The whole world knows and even a Middle school child knows today, that DNA can be isolated from extinct Dinosaur fossils which are more than 50 million year old. And our 'EXPERTS' say that 2 month old stain does not yield intact DNA.

In this regard, I request that some investigating authority within the CBI to peruse the case files pertaining to Magunta Subbarami Reddy murder case of Ongole wherein I, as a DNA expert had given a conclusive report by similar testing in 1990’s, despite the samples being contaminated by other human samples. The strong evidence was upheld by the Hon'ble Supreme Court as well, and the accused were sentenced for life.

What CBI did not realise was that different levels of experience and training plays a part in effective mixture interpretation and it is very Scientist specific and frankly CDFD does not have it. Untalented and inexperienced Scientists of India have failed Aarushi. May her soul rest in peace.