Sanjay Dubey v. State of Madhya Pradesh & Anr. — DNA testing guidelines — police dereliction for non-compliance

Part of the Forensic Docket on Legal Desire Forensics — how a forensic technique fared under appellate scrutiny.

The facts

An FIR was registered against an accused under Sections 376 and 506 of the Penal Code, together with the POCSO Act, the SC/ST Act and the IT Act.

The Forensic Science Laboratory’s report was forwarded to the appellant, a police Inspector, with a note that the prescribed guidelines for DNA examination be followed; however, the DNA examination itself was not carried out.

While the accused’s bail plea was pending, the High Court called for the case diary but found that the FSL report had not been included in it.

The Inspector was held guilty of dereliction of duty for these lapses, and directions were issued in consequence.

The Supreme Court, considering its jurisdiction under Articles 226 and 227 in relation to the High Court’s powers in bail matters, dismissed the appeal, thereby upholding the finding of dereliction against the Inspector.

Why this belongs in the Forensic Docket: This case underscores that DNA-testing guidelines in sexual-offence investigations are not optional formalities — an investigating officer’s failure to ensure the examination is actually carried out, and to keep the FSL report in the case diary, can itself become the basis for personal accountability, independent of the underlying trial.

Case details

Read the full judgment (PDF), sourced from the Indian Supreme Court Judgments open dataset (AWS Open Data Registry, CC-BY-4.0).

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