For all the hype over narco tests and brain-mapping of suspects a reality check has come from none other than the committee of Lok Sabha MPs probing the cash-for-votes scandal.

In the face of several MPs demanding that their colleagues named in the scandal along with other characters be put through narco-analysis, the Lok Sabha Committee, headed by Kishore Chandra Deo, has submitted two notes on the subject along with its draft report. Their key conclusion: it’s by no means reliable evidence.

These form part of the voluminous annexures of the report, yet to be circulated to members of the committee. The note on admissibility of narco-analysis as legal evidence states that while inhibitions of people undergoing the test are “generally reduced, people under the influence of what is called the truth serum are still able to lie and even tend to fantasize.”

The conclusion: “While expert studies and court opinions available internationally have granted that there may be some use in narco-analysis, the overwhelming evidence is that narco-analysis is by no means a reliable science.”

The legal position, according to the Committee, is that such tests “don’t have legal validity as confessions made by semi-conscious persons are not admissible in court. The court, may, however, grant limited admissibility after considering the circumstances under which the test was obtained.”

The narco-analysis test conducted by the CBI on Krishna, a suspect in the Arushi Talwar murder case, finds specific mention with a word of caution that “the legality of such an intrusive test remains under question, particularly in the absence of any specific provision under existing law to regulate it.”

... contd.