Lahore Police to introduce evidence collection force

Team will have more than 250 police officials of the investigations wing

LAHORE: Lahore Police has planned to introduce another force with the sole purpose of collecting forensic evidence from crime scenes.

The force will consist of more than 250 police officials of the investigations wing and they will be stationed at their respective police stations.

They will be provided motorcycles and investigation kits. Whenever there is a crime incident, their job will be to hush towards the location, along with the officials of operations wing, and collect evidence.

The material will then be handed over to the investigation officers concerned.

An officer of the investigations wing told The Express Tribune that a lot of time was consumed when completing the probe of a case. He said it was necessary to preserve the crime scene and evidence needed to be collected as early as possible.

“It is a universal rule of investigation that as time passes, the perpetrator manages to move further away from the offence,” he added. He said that after the initial process, the registered FIR was sent to the investigations wing.

From there, it was assigned to an officer who began the formal process of investigation, he stated. “As it took a lot of time, evidence is eventually lost with every passing moment,” he added.

He said it was necessary as a lot of forensic evidence was time-bound. The officer added fingerprints were formed at a crime scene due to moisture and they evaporated as time lapsed. “Similarly, DNA evidence was also contaminated, even if there was a minor human interaction with the crime scene,” he stated.

“Therefore, this new team will act as a Rapid Response Force and would prove to be an innovation in the field of investigation at the grass-root level,” he claimed.

Three years ago, the Lahore Police started a project named “Golden Hour” for the probe of murder cases.

According to this project, SOPs were laid down for homicide cases which stressed that evidence should be collected in an hour. “A few months later, a specialised unit called “Homicide Cell” was inaugurated to investigate murder cases which also considered this principle in their working.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 19^th, 2017.