The Committees and Commissions

The criminal justice reform stream

The Committee on Reforms of the Criminal Justice System, chaired by Justice V.S. Malimath, reported to the Ministry of Home Affairs and is the report most often cited in this context. Its central relevance to this paper is its diagnosis rather than any single recommendation: that Indian investigation relied too heavily on oral evidence and on confession, that witnesses turn hostile, and that the remedy is investigation built on scientific and documentary material.

That diagnosis is the thread running through the changes of 2023 and 2024, and an answer can connect them: the forensic expert at the scene in section 176(3), the audio-video recording of search and seizure in section 105, the statutory voice sample power in section 349, and the widened definition of measurements in the Act of 2022 are all steps in the direction the diagnosis pointed.

What the committees have not achieved

An answer that lists recommendations without asking what happened to them is incomplete.

No forensic regulator. No committee's recommendation has produced a body with power to accredit a laboratory, prescribe a method or act on a complaint.

No DNA statute. Report No. 271 produced a draft Bill; the Bill was introduced twice and withdrawn in July 2023.

No defence access to independent testing. No statute or scheme provides it.

No post-conviction testing scheme.

Capacity. Recommendations to expand laboratory capacity have been made for decades, and the backlog persists.

A worked example: how a recommendation becomes a section

The problem: an accused refuses to give a specimen of his handwriting, and the case cannot be proved without a comparison.

The judicial identification of the gap. State (Delhi Administration) v. Pali Ram held that the court's power to make a person present in court write exists only to enable the court itself to compare, and not to supply a handwriting expert with material. So the gap was authoritatively identified in 1978.

The recommendation. Reform of the identification and specimen provisions had been the subject of Law Commission attention, including a whole report on the Identification of Prisoners Act, and the criminal justice reform stream pressed for scientific investigation.

The legislation. A power to order specimen signatures and handwriting during investigation was inserted into the Code of Criminal Procedure in 2005, and it is now section 349 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023, widened to include finger impressions and voice samples and with a proviso allowing an order against a person who has not been arrested, for reasons recorded in writing.

The point. Twenty seven years from the identification of the gap to the enactment of the power, and a further eighteen to the version that covers a voice sample. That is the pace at which this subject changes, and it is worth saying so.

Distinctions

What beginners get wrong

Naming committees without their subject. A committee's name is worth nothing; what it recommended is worth marks.

Giving unsourced report numbers. The Law Commission publishes its list; use it.

Treating a recommendation as law. Report No. 271 produced a draft Bill and India still has no DNA statute.

Omitting the National Human Rights Commission. It is named in the Directorate's own account of its creation and it is the most interesting body in that sentence.

Quick revision

• Law Commission reports: No. 69, the Indian Evidence Act, 1977; No. 84, rape and allied offences, 1980; No. 87, Identification of Prisoners Act, 1920, in 1980; No. 185, review of the Evidence Act, 2003; and No. 271, Human DNA Profiling, a draft Bill, 26 July 2017.
• The Padmanabhaiah Committee on Police Reforms, with the National Human Rights Commission, recommended the separation that produced the Directorate of Forensic Science Services by Ministry of Home Affairs Order No. 25011/41/2001-GPA.II/PM-II of 31 December 2002.
• The Malimath Committee on Reforms of the Criminal Justice System diagnosed over-reliance on oral evidence and confession and pressed for evidence led investigation, which is the thread through sections 176(3), 105 and 349 and the Act of 2022.
• What the committees have not produced: a regulator, a DNA statute, defence access to testing, post-conviction testing, or capacity.

Test yourself

1. Which Law Commission report produced the DNA Bill, and when was it submitted? Report No. 271, "Human DNA Profiling: a draft Bill for the use and regulation of DNA based technology", submitted on 26 July 2017. The Bill was introduced in 2018 and again in 2019 and was withdrawn from the Lok Sabha in July 2023.

2. Which bodies recommended the creation of the Directorate of Forensic Science Services? The National Human Rights Commission and the Padmanabhaiah Committee on Police Reforms, according to the Directorate's own account, and the separation was effected by Ministry of Home Affairs Order No. 25011/41/2001-GPA.II/PM-II dated 31 December 2002.

3. What was the central diagnosis of the criminal justice reform committee chaired by Justice Malimath, and how does it connect to current law? That Indian investigation relied too heavily on oral evidence and confession and that witnesses turn hostile, so investigation should rest on scientific and documentary material. That diagnosis runs through the forensic expert at the scene in section 176(3), the audio-video recording of search and seizure in section 105, the voice sample power in section 349 and the widened definition of measurements in the Act of 2022.

4. Name three things the committees have recommended that India still does not have. An independent forensic regulator with power to accredit laboratories and prescribe methods; a statute governing DNA profiling; and a scheme giving the defence access to independent testing. Post-conviction testing is a fourth.