The Forensic Science Laboratory (FSL) will soon complete blood test reports within three hours which will give a boost to investigation in narcotics cases. Currently it takes almost a month for the FSL to provide reports on samples sent by the police. This promptness in delivering the reports is possible thanks to a machine at the laboratory that was so far underutilised due to a procedural problem.

Director General (Legal and Technical) S P Yadav, who took charge recently said that the machine which they had bought from  Randox Technology a few years back has the capacity to run simultaneous tests on 80 blood samples.

The machine gives out a printed report mentioning the narcotics content in each sample after running the test for three hours. It was not put to use earlier as it required fresh blood samples to run the tests successfully, whereas it normally took two to three days from the date of collection for the samples to reach the lab. 

Yadav said that he will write to the police to dispatch the samples directly and immediately to the lab instead of storing them in hospitals. If the police could supply the blood samples within two-three hours, they would be able to give them a report within three hours. He added that the entire process will be transparent.

This machine can be extremely useful in cases of rave party busts where there are hundreds of samples which can take a long time to test. An officer said there have been times when there was delay in receiving reports from the FSL till the time of filing the chargesheet. During a raid, many people are detained, but some test negative later on. Getting results within a few hours will ensure that the innocent are not inconvenienced and they can be let off right away if they test negative.