Forensics training for govt lawyers

Public prosecutors (PPs) of different courts across the state have been attending three-day training workshops in forensic procedure at Gujarat Forensic Science University in Gandhinagar.

The training is expected to give the PPs a better understanding of forensic evidence and help them ensure conviction in more criminal cases.

A senior official of the Forensic Science Laboratory (FSL) in Gandhinagar said that, so far, they had trained as many as 240 public prosecutors, assistant public prosecutors and district government pleaders, among others. "So far, we have trained 6 batches consisting of 40 government lawyers each," the official said. FSL officials are also involved in training the public prosecutors at the Forensic Science University.

Encouraged by the response, state legal department is now working on a proposal to train government lawyers of the Gujarat high court too. In all, some 700 government lawyers who are working in the different courts of the state will be trained under the programme.

The FSL official said that this will also help improve the conviction rate in criminal cases. "The defence can challenge the evidence. If the prosecutor is not aware of the procedure involved in collecting the forensic evidence and analysing it, he/she may not be able to present the prosecution case properly, thereby reducing the chances of conviction," said the official.

Police are increasingly relying on scientific and medical evidence in criminal cases to ascertain the guilty.