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Forensic Science and Scientific Investigation of Crime
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LLM · Group 5 Criminal Law and Criminal Administration
2015 Examination
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LLM Group 5 Criminal Law and Criminal Administration Forensic Science and Scientific Investigation of Crime 2015 Question Paper with Solutions
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First published on munotes.in on 13 August 2026.
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The University does not publish an official answer key for this paper. The answers in this volume are model answers, written to show how a full-mark answer is built. They are a study aid, not an authority on what an examiner marked.
The question paper reproduced here is the paper as set by the University of Mumbai at the 2015 examination.
The answers in this volume state the law as it stands today, not as it stood when each paper was set, and four changes alter answers throughout this folder. The Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita and the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam came into force on 1 July 2024: section 176(3) of the Sanhita requires a forensic expert to attend the scene of every offence punishable with seven years or more, but only from a date each State notifies within five years. The DNA Technology (Use and Application) Regulation Bill, 2019 was withdrawn from the Lok Sabha in July 2023, so India has no DNA statute and no body that accredits a forensic laboratory. Kattavellai v. State of Tamil Nadu, 15 July 2025, now requires every sample to reach the laboratory within forty eight hours and a chain of custody register signed by each handler. And Amlesh Kumar v. State of Bihar, 10 June 2025, holds that an accused has no right to demand a narco-analysis test and that its findings can never be the sole basis of a conviction.
Contents
The questions below are the paper as the University of Mumbai set it at the 2015 examination, in the order it was set.
MarksPage
The Paper as Set
The questions in this volume are the questions asked at the 2015 examination, reproduced as the University of Mumbai set them, in the order it set them. Nothing has been reworded, added or left out. Only the answers are ours. See the original question paper.
Duration 3 hours · Total marks 100 · 14 questions answered
How to use this volume
Solve the paper first, under exam conditions and against the clock. Then read the answers here and mark your own. Reading a solution before attempting the question feels productive and teaches very little, because recognising an answer is not the same as being able to write one.
SECTION I
Q.P. Code 15890, printer's line BB-Con. 8189-15, the first paper. Attempt any four questions, all questions carry equal marks
any four of seven · 100 Marks
1.Write short notes (Any Two): a) 'Narco-Analysis' b) DNA c) Forensic Anthropology.[25]
Answer
For full marks, cover: two of three, at about twelve and a half marks each, and all three are written out. The trap in this particular trio is note b), which is printed simply as "DNA": that is an invitation to write about the molecule, and the marks are not there. Write it as DNA profiling in the criminal process, from the sample to the courtroom, and say that India has no DNA statute. On note a), the science is worth three marks and Selvi is worth nine. On note c), use the four determinations as your structure.
a) Narco-analysis (about 12.5 marks)
What it is. Narco-analysis is the interrogation of a subject brought by a slow intravenous infusion of a barbiturate, ordinarily sodium pentothal, into the hypnotic stage between consciousness and surgical anaesthesia. Barbiturates depress the central nervous system in a descending order, suppressing the higher cortical functions that govern deliberation before those that govern respiration, so there is a window in which the subject can speak but has reduced capacity to construct a deliberate account. The dose is titrated against his responses by an anaesthetist, with a psychologist conducting the interview, a forensic expert recording and the whole session on audio and video. The popular name "truth serum" is a misnomer, and identifying it as one is worth a mark, because no drug compels truth.
Why it is unreliable. The drug removes the capacity to withhold, not the capacity to invent. The induced state is one of suggestibility, so a leading question substantially supplies its own answer; it produces confabulation, in which the subject fills gaps with plausible material and reports it with the confidence of memory; it does not distinguish experience from fantasy or from what the subject has been told; and it has no published error rate and no accepted scoring method, so it fails the reliability requirement for expert evidence laid down in Ramesh Chandra Agrawal v. Regency Hospital Ltd., (2009) 9 SCC 709. It follows that the technique cannot reliably exonerate either.
The law. Selvi v. State of Karnataka, (2010) 7 SCC 263, decided on 5 May 2010, holds four things. Compulsory administration violates Article 20(3), because narco-analysis produces a testimonial act, the subject being made to speak, which falls within "to be a witness" as construed in State of Bombay v. Kathi Kalu Oghad, AIR 1961 SC 1808, unlike a fingerprint or handwriting specimen, which is material. It violates Article 21 independently, as an intrusion into mental privacy, which matters because it protects witnesses who cannot invoke Article 20(3). Consent does not make the results evidence, because the subject exercises no conscious control over the responses.
And what survives is discovery: material subsequently discovered with the help of a voluntary test may be proved under s.27 of the Evidence Act, now the proviso to s.23(2) of the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam, 2023. The Court directed strict compliance with the National Human Rights Commission's Guidelines for the Administration of Polygraph Test (Lie Detector Test) on an Accused, 2000, which require the option rather than a requirement, information about the implications with access to a lawyer, consent recorded before a Judicial Magistrate, and conduct in an independent agency in a lawyer's presence.
Before Selvi the technique was permitted, and in this State the leading decision was Ramchandra Ram Reddy v. State of Maharashtra, decided by the Bombay High Court on 5 March 2004, upholding orders of the Special Court at Pune permitting brain mapping, polygraph and narco-analysis of the accused in the counterfeit stamp paper investigation in which Abdul Karim Telgi was the principal accused. Amlesh Kumar v. State of Bihar, 2025 INSC 810, decided on 10 June 2025, is the current statement: it set aside a Patna High Court order of 9 November 2023 permitting involuntary testing, and held that an accused has no indefeasible right to demand the test and that its findings cannot be the sole basis of a conviction.
b) DNA (about 12.5 marks)
The scientific basis. Human beings share about ninety-nine point nine per cent of their genomic sequence, and the variation used for identification lies in non-coding regions. Forensic profiling counts short tandem repeats, sequences of two to six base pairs repeated a variable number of times at each of an agreed set of loci, with the amelogenin locus included to indicate sex. Identical twins share a profile; nobody else does, to any probability worth arguing about.
The process, from sample to number. The sample is collected and preserved, which is now a legally regulated step. Extraction releases the DNA, with differential extraction used on sexual assault samples to separate the sperm fraction from the epithelial fraction. Quantification measures how much human DNA is present and whether it is degraded. Amplification by the polymerase chain reaction in a thermal cycler copies the target loci through repeated cycles of denaturation, annealing and extension, which is what permits a profile from a few cells. Separation by capillary electrophoresis sorts the products by size. Comparison with a reference profile follows, and the result is expressed as a random match probability.
Three variants matter. Autosomal STR profiling is standard and most discriminating. Y-STR profiling finds a male contributor in a female-dominated mixture but identifies a paternal lineage, so all males in that line share it. Mitochondrial DNA survives degradation and is used on old bone, teeth and hair shafts, but identifies a maternal lineage.
The Indian legal position, which is where the marks are. There is no DNA statute in India. The DNA Technology (Use and Application) Regulation Bill, 2019, which would have created a DNA Regulatory Board, a national data bank and compulsory accreditation of laboratories, was introduced on 8 July 2019 and withdrawn from the Lok Sabha in July 2023.
The powers to take samples therefore come from s.51 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023, whose Explanation defines the examination of an arrested person to include blood, blood stains, semen, swabs in sexual offence cases, sputum and sweat, hair samples and nail clippings by modern scientific techniques "including DNA profiling"; from s.52 for a person arrested for rape and s.184 for the victim; and from the Criminal Procedure (Identification) Act, 2022, whose s.2(1)(b) brings biological samples and their analysis within "measurements", subject to the proviso to s.3 that a person arrested for an offence which is neither against a woman or a child nor punishable with seven years or more may not be obliged to give biological samples.
Admissibility is by s.39(1) of the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam, 2023, and Pattu Rajan v. State of Tamil Nadu, (2019) 4 SCC 771 holds expressly that DNA evidence is opinion evidence by which the court is not bound, on the same footing as ballistics, fingerprints and handwriting. India's first judicial acceptance was Kunhiraman v. Manoj, II (1991) DMC 499, a Kerala maintenance claim begun in 1988 and decided on profiling by the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology at Hyderabad, which had developed an indigenous probe in 1988 under Dr Lalji Singh, making India the third country in the world to do so.
In paternity disputes the position is separate. Section 116 of the Sakshya Adhiniyam, reproducing s.112 of the Evidence Act, makes birth during a valid marriage conclusive proof of legitimacy, rebuttable only by non-access. Goutam Kundu v. State of West Bengal, (1993) 3 SCC 418 held that courts cannot order a blood test as a matter of course, that a roving enquiry is not permitted, that a strong prima facie case of non-access must be shown, that the consequences of branding a child illegitimate must be weighed, and that no one can be compelled to give a sample. Nandlal Wasudeo Badwaik v. Lata Nandlal Badwaik, (2014) 2 SCC 576 is the counterweight: where the Central Forensic Science Laboratory at Hyderabad excluded the appellant as the biological father, the Supreme Court held that where there is a conflict between a conclusive proof envisaged by law and proof based on scientific advancement accepted by the world community, the latter must prevail.
The weakness is custody. In Rahul v. State of Delhi (NCT of Delhi), 2022 LiveLaw (SC) 926, samples lay in police custody about two months with nothing recorded and three death sentences were set aside. In Kattavellai @ Devakar v. State of Tamil Nadu, 2025 INSC 845, decided on 15 July 2025, samples taken on 19 May 2011 reached the laboratory on 29 June 2011, an unexplained gap of forty-one days, and the Court acquitted and directed for the whole country documented packaging with the FIR number and date, the section and statute, the investigating officer and police station details and a serial number, delivery within forty-eight hours with written reasons for delay, and a Chain of Custody Register signed by every handler.
c) Forensic anthropology (about 12.5 marks)
What it is. Forensic anthropology applies physical and skeletal anthropology to medico-legal problems, and it begins where ordinary medical identification fails: where a body is skeletonised, burnt, dismembered, decomposed past recognition, or commingled with others.
Recovery, by archaeological method, recording the position of every element in three dimensions with the soil stratigraphy and associated objects, because that record establishes whether a grave was dug, whether the body was moved, how many individuals are present and roughly how long they lay there. Section 176(3) of the Sanhita now requires a forensic expert to attend the scene of every offence punishable with seven years or more, which is the provision that makes proper recovery a duty.
Preliminary assessment: is the material bone, is it human rather than animal, how many individuals are represented, and is it of forensic or archaeological antiquity.
The four determinations. Sex from the pelvis, which in the female is broader with a wide sub-pubic angle, a broad sciatic notch and a preauricular sulcus, and secondarily from the skull; accuracy is high from a complete pelvis and poor from long bones alone. Age from dental eruption in childhood, from epiphyseal fusion through adolescence into the mid twenties, and thereafter from the pubic symphyseal face, the sternal rib ends and cranial suture closure, each less precise than the last. Stature by regression from the maximum length of a long bone, the femur giving the best result, with a standard error of several centimetres that must be stated. Ancestry from craniofacial morphology, the weakest of the four.
Individuation and trauma. Comparison with ante-mortem records, dental charts and restorations, healed fractures, surgical implants and frontal sinus radiographs, or DNA from cortical bone or tooth pulp. Failing those, facial approximation and craniofacial superimposition, whose Indian standing was settled in Pattu Rajan v. State of Tamil Nadu, (2019) 4 SCC 771, where the Supreme Court accepted a superimposition result as part of a corroborated body of evidence while stating that the technique is not infallible. Trauma analysis distinguishes ante-mortem injury, which shows healing, peri-mortem injury, where fresh elastic bone fractures characteristically, and post-mortem damage to dry bone, with internal bevelling at a bullet entry in the skull and external bevelling at the exit.
The Indian legal use. Age determination, governed by s.94 of the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2015, which places the ossification test last, after the matriculation or school certificate and the corporation, municipal or panchayat birth certificate. Jarnail Singh v. State of Haryana, (2013) 7 SCC 263 extends that hierarchy to a child who is the victim of an offence. In mass fatalities the discipline works to the INTERPOL Disaster Victim Identification standard, whose primary identifiers are fingerprints, dental records and DNA.
Conclusion. Narco-analysis is interrogation under a barbiturate infusion, unreliable because suggestibility and confabulation are properties of the induced state, and after Selvi and Amlesh Kumar it cannot be compelled, its results are inadmissible even on consent, and only a discovery survives under the proviso to s.23(2) of the Sakshya Adhiniyam.
DNA profiling counts short tandem repeats and reports a random match probability, enters Indian trials as ordinary opinion evidence under s.39 by which Pattu Rajan holds the court is not bound, rests on ss.51, 52 and 184 of the Sanhita and the Criminal Procedure (Identification) Act, 2022 because there is no DNA statute after the 2019 Bill was withdrawn in July 2023, and is defeated by custody rather than by chemistry, as Rahul and Kattavellai show. Forensic anthropology identifies the unknown dead through archaeological recovery, the four determinations of sex, age, stature and ancestry, and individuation against ante-mortem records or by superimposition, with its most regulated Indian use, age determination, subordinated by s.94 of the Juvenile Justice Act to documentary proof.
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