Solving crimes, balancing rights in police investigation

Jinee Lokneeta's editorial on Police investigation and unethical "scientific interrogation" was published in the January-March 2023 issue of IJME [1]. It is a scathing critique of the way police investigators rampantly misuse/exploit loopholes in the law, extract forced confessions from the accused and use them in a court of law - sometimes leading to convictions or prolonged incarceration of innocent victims. Her Excellency, the Hon'ble President of India, expressed similar sentiments when she questioned the need for building more jails at the same time that we talk of "moving towards progress as a society" [2]. Her comment was in the context of a large number of undertrials in jails, suffering from the inefficiency of the present day criminal justice system. Therefore, the need of the hour is to fix the weaknesses in the system and advance towards a rapid, truthful, honest and impartial system of police investigation. It is against this background that the journal has published the Editorial, and we support the broader intent which impelled the author to research the current criminal investigation system and expose its deficiencies. Nevertheless, when we go deeper into the details, several features begin to appear which seem incongruous with the author's arguments in her editorial.