The Hyderabad-based Centre for DNA Fingerprinting and Diagnostics (CDFD), the pioneer in DNA fingerprinting and diagnostics in the country, and the National Academy of Legal Studies and Research (Nalsar), Hyderabad, have prepared the draft of the bill.
"The draft is ready and I hope the bill will be tabled in parliament this year," said Seyed Ehtesham Hasnain, director of CDFD and member-secretary of the DNA Profiling Advisory Council.
The first draft of the bill is being circulated among ministries of law, home affairs and science. The final draft will be presented to the cabinet before it is tabled in the parliament. With more than a dozen state forensic laboratories handling DNA fingerprinting cases and private laboratories too entering the field, the bill also provides for quality control and quality assurance.
"The bill will allow us to store, retrieve and use a DNA fingerprinting database of convicts and criminals. It is the need of the hour because the finality of court judgments pertaining to criminal cases is being questioned," said Hasnain.
He said over 100 cases were reopened in various countries, including the US, after final judgments were delivered with regard to convictions.
"In many of these cases, the persons who were convicted were found to be innocent based on DNA profiling," he said.
Such a database proved highly useful and effective in the criminal investigation and justice delivery system in countries, including New Zealand. "The rate of conviction has gone up significantly wherever DNA fingerprinting has been taken as evidence in the court," he said.
Currently, DNA test findings are presented as expert evidence under the Indian Evidence Act, but have no statutory recognition.
"The witnesses may turn hostile and other circumstantial evidences can be manipulated, but the DNA does not lie," said Hasnain.
CDFD, a premier research institute under the Department of Biotechnology, ministry of science and technology, has helped the Central Bureau of Investigations (CBI) and other investigating authorities in several high profile cases like assassination of former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi and former chief minister of Punjab Beant Singh and the murder of poetess Madhumita Shukla.
Developed by Sir Alec Jeffreys, a professor at the University of Leicester in the UK in 1984, DNA fingerprinting helps law enforcement agencies or courts to determine an individual's involvement in a crime or settle a dispute over paternity.
While the DNA's chemical structure is the same in all human beings, there is a recognisable difference in the order in which the millions of base pairs found in each person's DNA is arranged. It is this difference that is captured by DNA fingerprinting.
Every person leaves traces of his DNA. It is the gathering of these traces at a scene of offence that helps investigators in identifying the criminal.
