Narcotest-A Gigantic Fraud on the Nation

Narcoanalysis Used in India is a Gigantic Fraud on the Nation
Prof Dr P Chandra Sekharan
MA, MSc, PhD, BL, DEL, F Inst P(Lond), FFSc FAFSc FISC, FACFE (USA)
President, Forensics International, Bangalore

1. It was sometimes during 2000, two non-medicos from Bangalore, Dr.S.Malini, psychologist, appointed as a lie-detector technician on contract basis in the Forensic Science Laboratory and Dr, B.M. Mohan, an organic chemist and director of the lab, took a fancy to an old primitive method known as "narcoanalysis" and suo jure declared it as if a modern technique that they themselves had developed to tackle all crimes. The Bangalore duo had conveniently camouflaged narcoanalysis in an attractive four-in one package of tests to lure the Indian Police. The ‘package’ consists of i) pretest interview and interrogation ii) polygraph test iii) brain fingerprinting test and iv) narcoanalysis.
2. All the four tests were conducted by the one and the same ‘lie-detector-technician’ (psychologist) one after the other on the pretext that the earlier test suggests confirmation by the next. The final confirmation is made by narcoanalysis, the century old obsolete method.
3. The suspects, in their sleep-like-state under the drug (trance) would only blabber and utter ‘ums’ and ‘amms’ for all the questions put to them. But if the subject under test pretends to be in this transitional stage, then he can make lectures as Telgi made in his Narco CDs. [ In fact there is no mechanism to measure the level of trance. The anaethestist can only find out whther a patient is fully under the influence of anaesthesia and fit for surgey.] But the report can conveniently be drafted as if the subject had made narrative verbal statements. The report on the first test is based on nonverbal behaviors and attitudinal characteristics while the second and third tests are simply based on electrical responses and hence the manipulation of these reports will not be that good as the narco report. The Bangalore duo also prepared video and audio CDs the Narcotest and offered the CDs to the police in addition to the written report.
4. Thus the written report and the CDS provided by the Bangalore Lab were very convenient to the Central and State investigating agencies that made a pilgrimage to Bangalore rather than proceeding with the time-proven ‘sustained interrogation’. Overwhelmed by their success the Bangalore duo found that the ‘Narcotest CDs’ will fetch huge money when sold to TV channels. It is said that sale of ‘Telgi’s Narcotest CDs alone had brought not only a huge fortune but overnight fame to the analysts. Narco CDs played a big role in the TV channels and newspapers even before they reach the investigators and they have been distributed like 'laddus' during press coferences. This big racket came to the notice of not only the Karnataka Police but also to the Police of the Central and State Police who were initially mesmerized by the package offer and referring cases to the duo. They made complaints about this matter to the Karnataka Police
5. When Bangalore FSL offered the ‘package’ tests it had neither any sanction of State government nor it made any scientific appraisal, critical evaluation, peer review or ethical considerations. When the ‘Bangalore duo’ came under shade, they rushed to Dr. M.S. Rao, Director of Forensic Science (DFS) under MHA, Government of India who readily came to their rescue and contrived to officially release a ‘Laboratory Procedure Manual-Forensic Narcoanalysis’ under the banner of MHA, prescribing the procedure for the conduct of narcoanalysis. There was no provocation for DFS to bring out such a manual at this juncture unless he conspired to salvage the duo and share the booty. The 'duo' had overnight become a 'trio'
6. The manual was released in 2005 by the DFS, which proclaims “Promoting Good Practices and Standards” for a technique not practiced until that day in any of the three Central Forensic Science Laboratories directly under its own control; a technique considered to be a barbaric practice and abandoned by all civilized countries; a technique not practiced by any Forensic Science Laboratory anywhere in the world; a technique, since its inception in 1922 was practiced only in hospitals with the help of medical men, psychiatrist and anaesthetist until it was abandoned a few decades ago. Except the anaestheti procedure, no big technology is involved.
7. The “Laboratory Procedure Manual-Forensic Narcoanalysis” carries fraudulent information as if many laboratories in India are doing this test. It is said in the preface of the manual that “Forensic Science Laboratories now have started playing active role in providing scientific aids to investigators by examining suspects under the ‘state of trance’ achieved by employing Narcoanalysis technique”. The fact is that no laboratory other than the Bangalore one in India conducts this test. The latest technical paper on “narcoanalysis” quoted in the manual is from 1954!! Umpteen numbers of papers and public reports condemning narcoanalysis are available in net and absolutely there is no research paper to claim that the narco-technique advocated today is any better than the one developed in 1922 and dubbed as uncivilized by many nations.
8. The write-up, resembling the advocacy of a private company to promote its product, makes tall claims ignoring all negative aspects and risk factors involved in the test. The manual also advises that the revelations during narcoanalysis can be verified by polygraphy and brain fingerprinting, the two pseudoscientific techniques. Glaringly, the manual also advocates the preparation of CDs for narco test. It appears that the manual is prepared and issued under the banner of MHA [?for some consideration] only to save the Bangalore duo who carried out the tests and prepared video CDs without proper government authority and legal sanction to start with. Many considered that the manual is an eyesore before the international community of forensic scientists and therefore had written to MHA that the manual should be withdrawn at once.
9. Meanwhile the DFS constituted an Expert Committee in May 2007 to review and scrutinize the brain fingerprinting technique used in Bangalore and Gandhinagar FSLs. (Gandhinagar FSL joined later). The Committee was headed by the Vice Chancellor of the National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences, Bangalore. There were four other expert members and Dr Rao included himself as a fifth member. The DFS had however released a manual of procedure for brain fingerprinting even before he planned this exercise.
10. The Committee came out with a clear finding that
1) Scientific basis for brain fingerprinting as well as the ‘Brain Electrical Oscillation Signature’ is sub-optimal
2) Peer reviewed publication with relevance to normative data is none
3) Potential error rate is unknown
4) Procedural standards need optimization
5) Scientific acceptance is not unequivocal
11. Dr. Rao realising that the Committee had not come with a favourable finding and that he had already committed a mistake of being party to use the test in actual cases and that too using human beings as guinea pigs, sprang up with an order dissolving the committee saying that the Directors of FSLs decided to take care of their technologies! It is indeed the height of arrogance. It is not known whether DFS got the approval of the Ministry either to appoint the expert committee or to dissolve it. Nevertheless a lot of dirty linen was washed in the media.
12. The DFS has gone on record, perhaps informed the Government also, that ‘though inhuman, these techniques have helped the police to nab terrorists’. I had interacted with world top-class experts on counterterrorism when I attended as invitee the Colombo International Conference on Counterterrorism (2007) and learnt that none of the countries use these pseudo scientific methods to nab terrorists. Even during my recent US-Canada professional tour in August-October 2008 the experts were amused to know that Indian Police are rallying round the Bangalore lab immediately after the arrest of the accused/suspects without doing any preliminary investigation. No doubt, the investigating skill of the Indian police is deteriorating, and narcoanalysis is being used to settle scores among politicians.
13. I can indeed take legitimate pride for my efforts to bringing DFS directly under the MHA. [Formerly this department was under the control of the Bureau of Research and Development of the MHA]. I was also Chairman appointed by the University to decide the award of Ph.D to Dr Rao and I have absolutely no ill-will against him. But it is very unfortunate that DFS is functioning in an autocratic manner without any advisory or governing body to supervise his work. His arrogance in dissolving the expert committee of internationally reputed scientists and throwing away their report cannot be condoned.
15. There are more than fifty Forensic Science Laboratories in India and many well qualified scientists are manning these laboratories. Why none these laboratories in India never thought about Narcotest all these years?
16. Narcoanalysis was neither developed as a ‘run-of-the-mill’ technique for crime investigation nor can it be claimed as an ‘analysis’. It is simply intravenously injecting a dose of Pentothal sodium to an individual to put him to a sleep-like-state and extracting answers for the questions relating to a crime he is alleged to have committed. Pentothal Sodium and other barbiturates were originally used by psychiatrists to treat the mentally ill especially as a means of releasing repressed feelings, thoughts or memories.
17. A Dallas obstetrician, Robert House accidentally stumbled upon narcoanalysis in 1922 while a pregnant woman, to whom he administered scopolamine as a pre-medication drug, made some interesting revelations. It then occurred to the obstetrician that it can be employed to extract truth from criminals. He coined the term ‘truth serum’.
18. Since then numerous clinical and experimental studies were conducted on the use of truth drugs in police interrogation and they revealed several interesting factors. Several patients revealed fantasies, fears, and delusions approaching delirium, much of which could readily be distinguished from reality. The Central Intelligence Agency admitted at the 1977 US Senate hearings that ‘no such magic brew as the popular notion of truth serum exists
19. Narcoanalysis was therefore declared by all civilized countries as an inhuman psychological third degree method raising serious questions of individual rights and liberties and was abandoned world-wide both in psychiatric and police practice during nineteen seventies. In all these years since its inception while being popular and even later when it became unpopular, narcoanalysis was done only in hospitals and medical colleges by a psychiatrist assisted by an anesthetist, because the test requires immediate medical intervention in cases of any eventualities due to the expected lethal side effects of Pentothal Sodium. It was never done in any forensic science laboratory anywhere in the world.
20. When narco test was discarded, the polygraph (lie detector) test, again proposed by an American medical internee was used to detect truth. Polygraph (like ECG) monitors and records electrical responses from the body that are affected by the emotional condition of the person. This test was again proved to depend on trickery and not science and inherently biased against the truthful. ‘Absolutely there is no difference between a polygraphist who manipulates examinations and a law-enforcement officer who plants contraband on a suspect. The only difference is the law enforcement officer has committed a crime and the polygraphist just made money.
21. Again an American psychologist Lawrence Farwell during nineteen nineties developed a new technique called “Brain fingerprinting”. This technique uses an Electro Encephalograph (EEG) to record brainwave responses of a crime-suspect when the computer images of selected crime-related objects, words or phrases are shown to him. Claiming superiority over polygraph, the inventor claimed that brain fingerprinting does not attempt to determine whether or not a subject is telling the truth, but attempts to determine whether the subject’s brain has a record of relevant objects, words or phrases. Farwell’s technique is so science-fictional that there were few takers in America itself and virtually there were no takers in other parts of the world.
22. EEG is a non-specific indicator of cerebral function. It is just like a listener sitting outside a football stadium cannot see the activity inside but may make some guesses about the course of the game based on hearing the fluctuating roar of the crowd. I exposed the fallacy behind brain fingerprinting when Farwell visited Hyderabad on March 27, 2004, whence Andhra Pradesh FSL organized a symposium. I confronted him with my comment that brain fingerprinting would not differentiate the brain wave responses between the perpetrator and others who have knowledge about the crime. The Indian Johnnies who were simply copying Farwell's technique, concurred with my comment and promised that they will soon come out with an answer. But till date no finding on this aspect came either from them or from any other quarter. There were also no peer-reviewed publications.
23. The Government of India seems to have been carried away by the explanation offered by the DFS that ‘though inhuman, these techniques have helped the police to nab terrorists’. I had interacted with world top-class experts on counterterrorism when I attended as invitee the Colombo International Conference on Counterterrorism (2007) and learnt that none of the countries use these pseudo scientific methods to nab terrorists. Even during my recent US-Canada professional tour in August-October 2008 the experts were amused to know that Indian Police are rallying round the Bangalore lab immediately after the arrest of the accused/suspects without doing any preliminary investigation. No doubt, the investigating skill of the Indian police is deteriorating, and narcoanalysis is being used to settle even political scores among politicians. 24. The Indian judiciary barring the Supreme Court appears to have given its tacit approval to the police to employ the primitive narcoanalysis and premature brain-mapping in crime investigation. The Fourth Estate looks at these tests with the same excitement it had when ‘truth serum’ was announced in 1922. The Indian neuroscientists are amused to see the misuse of brain sciences while the Indian psychiatry is the only agency agitated over the issue.
25. But we must compliment the Bangalore duo Malini and Mohan for their tantalising efficiency with which they have mesmorised the late Srinivasan, former DGP to codone all rules and regulations and to circumwent even the rulings of the Apex Court of the country. Thanks to the untiring efforts of the 'trio', Karnataka government wil be the first in the country, nay, first in the world, to start innumerable narco analysis centres and brain mapping labs all over the state.
Let not the bones of all the yester-years' pioneers in forensics wriggle in thier graves. May their souls rest in peace. Let clinical psychologists and anaesthetists rule the roost