MHA irked as Minister seeks cyber lab ‘credit’ over Nirbhaya fund

A high-end forensic workstation, along the lines of US’ Federal Bureau of Investigation’s laboratory, is to come up at Chandigarh. It will cater only to cases of crimes against women and is being carved from the Nirbhaya Fund at a cost of Rs 99 crore.

Minister for Women and Child Development (WCD) Maneka Gandhi has written to the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), requesting permission to kick-start the process of setting up the laboratory since it is associated with the Nirbhaya Fund.

Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh was to lay the foundation stone for the project, but MHA is now considering Gandhi’s request.

In the letter dated May 21, the WCD minister appreciated the MHA’s efforts to run forensic labs across the country, but pointed out that existing laboratories have not been adequate to deal with the increasing numbers of sexual crimes against women and children in the past decade.

“To address this, we have approved the setting up of a state-of-art forensic facility to deal with sexual crimes against women and children in the campus of Central Forensic Science Laboratory (CFSL), Chandigarh,” the letter says.

She appreciates the MHA’s efforts to co-ordinate closely with WCD on this, and adds, “To kick-start the process, I will be visiting CFSL in Chandigarh on June 1.”