India’s Forensic Challenge

“We can all see, but can you observe?”
― A. D. Garrett, Everyone Lies

The last couple of years saw two big cases making the headlines of the Indian tabloids frequently: the Sheena Bora murder case, and Sunanda Pushkar’s (Indian National Congress leader Shashi Tharoor’s wife) alleged suicide. The sudden upheaval caused by these cases was nothing short of a daily soap, with every household closely following their developments.

The progress of these cases also brought various shades of the Indian investigative system into the limelight. The case of Bora’s murder, which happened in April 2012, resurfaced only in August 2015. The three year gap between the discovery of Bora’s remains, and the investigation to gain some result, led to serious discrepancies in the forensic aspect of the case. BYL Nair Hospital, Mumbai conducted a forensic analysis on Bora’s remains, and confirmed a profile of a woman within Sheena’s age range and body frame. Additionally, another private institute matched the skull remains to Sheena Bora’s facial structure.  

New troubles arose for the seemingly smooth investigation, when the remains submitted by the police to JJ Hospital, Mumbai in 2012, and the remains returned by JJ to BYL Nair Hospital, Mumbai in 2015, for further investigation, did not match. The contradicting forensic reports with respect to causes for Indrani Mukherjea’s (the accused for Sheena Bora’s murder) collapse in her prison cell, further questions their reliability. For an investigation tying up threads for a heinous crime such as murder, unadulterated forensic evidence is of utmost importance. Inconclusive findings like these are a result of caused by neglect by police and disoriented methodology. 

Back in 2008, the Aarushi Talwar case took the nation by storm. The handling of forensics in this double murder investigation underwent considerable amount of criticism. The crime scene was heavily contaminated due to the carelessness of the police officials in charge evidence (for instance, the crime scene was contaminated with fingerprints of the people present, which made it difficult to acquire any information of a possible suspect). This kind of negligence has terrible repercussions on tying up loose ends of an investigation, consequently leading to unsatisfying evidence.

Unavailability of proper lab instruments led to several investigative delays in Sunanda Pushkar’s alleged suicide case (later revealed to be a murder). Since the equipment essential to detect a certain kind of poison was not available in India, the task had to be outsourced to a lab in the USA. The investigation faced a severe setback when the AIIMS forensic chief claimed that he was forced to produce a fake report for the case, and came under tremendous pressure when he refused to do so.

The Indian Supreme Court passed a judgement in 2011 that no test shall be conducted on a suspect without his/her permission. Further, any evidence collected through such a test cannot be used in the court. This poses as a huge hurdle in the public prosecutor’s case, unless some other influential evidence is acquired based on the test results. In more recent times, the double murder case of Hema Upadhay and her lawyer has suffered from this judgement as the court refused permission to the police to conduct a narco analysis on the victim’s husband (a potential suspect).

Digital forensics in India also seems to be lagging as compared to the rest of the world, with respect to available technology. Furthermore, there is a lack of qualified personnel in the forensic labs in our country, which poses as a serious challenge. There is no proper training in forensic methodology provided to the police officials, and the psychological aspect of the field is largely overlooked. Experience of working with cases forms a large part of their forensic know-how. Further, it has been observed that there are several clashes between the staff at forensic labs and police officials, due to the lack of knowledge of terminologies of the latter, thereby leading to further delay and negligence as mentioned in the cases above.

India needs a more established structure for handling forensic cases. The government needs to direct more funds towards improving forensic lab facilities and the technology used. Moreover, proper training needs to be provided to investigation officers with respect to handling of evidence, dealing with the crime scene, focusing on more relevant aspects of investigation, and the like. The police could also directly recruit personnel qualified in forensics under them, so that ethical handling of evidence takes place, and a person is readily available to interpret the final reports accurately. The investigative agencies need to streamline their procedures, create a basic forensic know-how within their personnel, and identify and fill the procedural gaps in handling of cases.  If this isn’t achieved soon, the system surely poses a risk to become dangerously similar to the TV serial CID!

Sampada Karandikar

Why We Need Net Neutrality

The internet is a vast, unfathomable source of information. There exist over 1 billion websites today, with approximately 1, 40,000 new websites created every day. This gives us access to more information than our ancestors would have ever imagined. The internet connects you to the most important as well as the most quirky things on this planet – don’t know how to describe your emotion? Here is the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows.  Wonder how your income compares to Warren Buffet’s? Penny Stocks will tell you.

The beauty of the internet lies in this: our ability to access the most inconsequential information to the most vital pieces of information with equal ease. We don’t have to wait longer for certain websites to load as compared to others. We don’t have to pay more to be able to view certain websites. The internet is an egalitarian forum, giving its users access to content previously unparalleled, in terms of quality and quantity. This is the basic concept of net neutrality.

Now imagine a world where only a small, selected number of websites from this vast universe are available to us, albeit free. For every website falling outside the listed ones, we will have to pay. The speed will vary; the non-listed websites will load slowly. The internet will no longer be equal-for-all: it will be a hierarchy of free to the most expensive websites. This is what Airtel-zero, Reliance, other Internet Service Providers and most recently Facebook, through its Free Basics campaign, are working towards.

The internet, since its creation, has been a platform for innovation. It has seen companies grow and create millionaires, simply by its ability to reach out to billions. One such example would be Facebook. Facebook started as a small network to emerge as the largest social network in the world today. Why? Because the internet let it. It did not require extra payment to load a new website called Facebook. It did not load Facebook slower because it was not ‘basic.’ And therein lies the irony of the current situation: Facebook’s attempt at regulating the very platform whose competitive and democratic nature let it grow.

Net neutrality allows this level-playing field where websites compete with one another solely on the basis of content. Competitive environments have been linked to growth, innovation, and greater consumer satisfaction. Free Basics and other campaigns against net neutrality will create a restrictive market of sorts, where some websites are easily available to the public as compared to others, and will consequently draw higher traffic. After all, who wants to pay for something when there exists a free alternative?  Imagine the adverse impact it will have on an economy that prides itself for boosting the growth of start-ups. 

On a more individualistic note, net neutrality gives us the freedom to be who we are. The content we consume on the internet is an expression of our virtual identity, a phenomenon that has been rising in importance in today’s digital age. If the internet is truly a basic democratic right, should it not allow individuals the freedom to exercise choice without making them pay more for it?

And most importantly, Free Basics and other campaigns give an external agency the authority to decide what is and what is not basic. Facebook will have the right to decide the websites we can view for free and those we must pay for, making Facebook the power hub of the internet. The internet, which has been a compelling force against authoritarianism through free and immediate access, will no longer possess the alacrity it previously did. Websites will have to go through the procedure of becoming ‘partners’ with Facebook for their website to gain free access.

The case put forth by Facebook in support of Free Basics is this: it will provide internet access to those who have none, in synch with Modi’s Digital India programme. But it will simultaneously give Facebook the opportunity to increase its user base by millions, potentially protecting it from competition from any quarter. Interestingly, majority of our population already considers Facebook the entire entity of the internet experience, with an overwhelming 58% responding to the statement, ‘Facebook is the internet’ in affirmative.

The issue of net neutrality is unlikely to reach a complete resolution soon, given the complexities that underlie it. But it is important to consider the effect a restrained, throttled internet will have, even if it is available to everyone. Surely there are ways of making the Internet available to everyone without compromising on its fundamental virtues. USA found a way through it, successfully enforcing net neutrality. It is now time for India step up and stay true to its virtue of being the world’s largest democracy: giving its people the same equality in the virtual world as it promises in reality.   

 Chinmayee Kantak

Is it Love at First Swipe?

Online dating sites are battling against each other to provide individuals with access to millions of potential dates everyday. In his book “The Paradox of Choice”, Schwartz questioned the assumption that more choice means better options and greater satisfaction. The more choices we have, the less likely we are to narrow down and stick to one option. If this was the case, dating apps would leave their customers unsatisfied, and yet, there has been a surge in the number of individuals who are turning to the internet to find love. So what is it about these apps that are leaving their customers wanting more?

            Tinder is the latest big addition to the online dating world. It is an app that identifies available heterosexual, gay, bisexual, or “curious” partners in the vicinity, and requires users to judge the pictures of fellow Tinderers by swiping right (like the profile) or left (do not like the profile). With an estimated 450 million profiles rated everyday and membership growing by 15% each week, the app has witnessed a 400% increase in downloads in India over the past year. Further, in a country where women are seen as shy and reserved, it was surprising that they were found to be more active in using the application than men. This conceptualizes the perception of Tinder usage in India, and of the online dating world in general, where individuals consider these sites/apps as safe places to have harmless conversation.

            Tinder is “a fun way to waste time with people you’d never want to date in real life”. In our technosexual era, the process of dating has been gamified by technology, where the real pleasure is derived from the process of using Tinder. B.F. Skinner studied operant conditioning in order to determine how different kinds of positive reinforcements in our environment affect our future behavior. He found that when some form of positive reinforcement followed a behavior, we were likely to repeat this behavior in the future. Applying Skinner’s classical theory to the very Modern Tinder, one could say that the positive reinforcement of a match between two strangers on tinder increases the chances of swiping right. Clinical psychologist Dr. Wendy Walsh concluded that the whole concept of the matching game and texting each other had become so much fun that the relationship never moved into the real world.

            Tinder simply pulls out photos and basic data from Facebook; allowing users to judge others based on their appearance alone. This is exactly the sort of scenario that most women say they want to stay away from, and yet, the app is particularly popular among women in India. In a way, we see “the manifestation of our cultural obsession with appearance and attention deficits” through a process that mimics the arranged marriage system in our country. So whether it is in person, on Tinder, or through the arranged marriage system, the same principle seemed to be followed: seeking what we want and avoiding what we don’t.

            Rising education, urbanization, and the use of matrimonial sites has created a platform where “arranged marriages have morphed into a culturally appropriate alternative to online dating”.   The development of apps like Tinder provides a platform for women (and men, for that matter) to express their choice in an atmosphere that otherwise imposes severe restrictions. Further, it provides a safe place for young women to exercise their desire of looking for something casual that does not have to materialize into a long-term relationship. Therefore, even though an array of choices can lead to indecisiveness, the option of having a choice is a novelty to many in our country.

Nikita Wadhwa