Indian police still using truth serum

Indian police still using truth serum

A person injected with “truth serum” is
generally too woozy to give lengthy explanations, but can supply answers
to certain questions and clues. Photograph: Valentin Flauraud/Reuters



It is the sort of scene that belongs in a film noir, not a
21st-century democracy: an uncooperative suspect being injected with a
dose of "truth serum" in an attempt to elicit a confession. But some
detectives in India
still swear by so-called narcoanalysis despite India's highest court
ruling that it was not only unreliable but also "cruel, inhuman and
degrading".
The technique is back in the news after officers from
India's Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) asked a judge for
permission to administer sodium pentothal to a high-profile Indian politician and his financial adviser embroiled in a corruption case. The drug is a barbiturate that acts on the central nervous system, dissolving anxiety, inducing drowsiness and even unconsciousness.
CBI
investigators made the application in order to try to prove
embezzlement allegations against Jagan Mohan Reddy, the charismatic son
of YS Rajasekhara Reddy, the former chief minister of Andhra Pradesh in
southern India, who died in a mysterious helicopter crash in 2009. They argue that the technique is warranted because neither Reddy nor his auditor are co-operating with the inquiry.
Reddy
Jr tipped for the chief minister's job himself, has protested
vehemently against the use of narcoanalysis on the grounds that a
supreme court ruling in 2010 held that such tests are illegal without
consent from the individuals.
But Dr Gandhi PC Kaza, chairman of
the Truth Lab, India's first independent forensic service, told the
Guardian that despite narcoanalysis being "unscientific, undemocratic,
illegal and inhumane", it was still used with enthusiasm in certain
Indian states – notably Gujarat and Karnataka. He condemned the
practice, saying it had "no place in the world's greatest democracy".
There
are no official figures for the number of suspects who have been
subjected to narcoanalysis, but VH Patel, deputy director at the
Directorate of Forensic Sciences, Gandhinagar, in Gujarat, western
India, told the Guardian he had personally conducted narcoanalysis in
nearly 100 cases. He estimates that his lab gets requests for
narcoanalysis three to four times a month.
He insisted that the
procedure was safe and ethical. "There is no violence involved. It's a
good methodology that helps the investigation," he said. "After all,
there has to be justice for the victims.If we conduct narcoanalysis on a
terror suspect, everyone kicks up a fuss, but what about the people who
have suffered?"
Patel said he worked with a team of three other
scientists to administer the tests, as well as a psychiatrist and an
anaesthetist, who decides which drugs to use at what dosage. "It takes
almost a week to test a single person. We conduct various medical tests
and interviews with them," he said. "It's an important methodology but
we cannot say how accurate it is in the end. That depends on the
investigation."
A person injected with "truth serum" is generally
too woozy to volunteer lengthy explanations, but is usually able to give
answers to certain questions and clues. Patel said his lab had received
no complaints regarding side-effects. But in 2011, Sheikh Mujib, an
engineering student who was accused in a bomb blast case in the Indian
city of Ahmedabad, complained of health problems after narcoanalysis.
Arun
Ferreira, a political activist who underwent forced narcoanalyis after
being arrested in 2007 under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act for
being an alleged Maoist, described the procedure as a sort of torture
– and one whichthat "only decreases the individual's ability to lie and
is in no way a foolproof method for uncovering the truth". The
revelations supposedly made under the influence of truth serum may
contain fantasies like a person under the influence of alcohol."
Sometimes defendants undergo the procedure in an attempt to prove their innocence. Rajesh and Nupur Talwar, currently on trial in Delhi for murdering their 14-year-old daughter,
volunteered for narcoanalysis in an attempt to prove their innocence.
The inventor of narcoanalysis, an American obstetrician called Robert
House, originally meant it to exonerate prisoners. During his time in
labour wards around 1915, he noticed that the drug administered to women
during childbirth, scopolamine, had a strange effect on his patients,
causing them to talk freely. In 1922, he arranged to interview two
suspected criminals under the influence of the same drug – they denied the charges and were later found not guilty.
Many
experts believe narcoanalysis can be classed as torture under the
United Nations Convention against Torture. Though India signed the
convention in 1997, its parliament never ratified it.


Source:-
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/jul/05/india-truth-serum