West Bengal: Mini forensic labs to be set up in 10 State medical colleges

Kolkata: To speed up forensic work in the state, the health department has decided to set up mini forensic laboratories in ten State medical colleges. They would help in speeding up autopsies and thus help the police in solving cases faster, and consequently, speed up cases in court.

These forensic laboratories would be conducting several types of work: serological tests (a type of blood test) in case of unnatural deaths (suicides, murders, etc.), tests of the viscera of those killed by snake bites as well as blood tests of those bitten by snakes (to determine the type of poison, and hence the category of anti-venom serum required), etc.

Each of these labs would be headed by a professor of forensic science and two technical personnel would be employed in each. State-of-the-art machinery would be installed like automated tissues analyser, vortex mixer, benchtop centrifuge, pH mixer, UV spectrophotometer and others.

Currently, on an average, 30,000 medico-legal autopsies are conducted in the State every year, the majority of which is done at the State Forensic Science Laboratory in Belgachia, Kolkata.

Now this work would be distributed across these new labs. For setting up each lab, about Rs, 18 lakh would be spent.