India Has No DNA Statute

In one line

There is no Indian law about DNA, and every book that says there is is out of date.

In the wording a student can write in an exam: India has no statute regulating DNA profiling. The Law Commission of India prepared a draft in Report No. 271 of 26 July 2017; a DNA Technology (Use and Application) Regulation Bill was introduced in 2018 and, on its lapse, again in 2019; and it was withdrawn from the Lok Sabha in July 2023. There is therefore no DNA Regulatory Board, no statutory DNA data bank organised in indices, no statutory accreditation of laboratories doing DNA work, and no statutory rule on consent for a person who is not an accused, on retention, on destruction or on familial searching.

Why this chapter exists separately

Because the error is universal. Coaching notes, commercial textbooks and answer keys describe the 2019 Bill as the law governing DNA in India, list the indices of a data bank that does not exist, and name a Regulatory Board that has never been constituted. A candidate who repeats that is repeating something that was never true and is now four years out of date.

What is actually in force

Nothing about DNA as such. The word appears in Indian statute law in three places relevant to this paper, and none of them is a DNA law.

The Explanation to section 51 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023, which defines the examination of an arrested person to include blood, blood stains, semen, swabs in cases of sexual offences, sputum and sweat, hair samples and finger nail clippings by the use of modern and scientific techniques including DNA profiling.

Sections 52 and 184 of the Sanhita, which require the reports on a person accused of rape and on the victim to state the description of the material taken for DNA profiling.

The Criminal Procedure (Identification) Act, 2022, whose definition of measurements includes biological samples and their analysis, subject to the proviso protecting a person arrested for an offence that is neither against a woman or a child nor punishable with seven years or more.

Everything else comes from the case law. Admissibility from section 39(1) of the Adhiniyam and the general law of expert opinion. Handling from the directions in Kattavellai @ Devakar v. State of Tamil Nadu. Ordering a test in a civil case from Goutam Kundu, Nandlal Wasudeo Badwaik and Dipanwita Roy.

The seven gaps

No Regulatory Board, so nobody approves, inspects or audits a DNA laboratory.

No statutory accreditation, so a laboratory may do DNA work whether or not it holds the voluntary accreditation.