The Sunday News
REPORTS that more than 1 000 rape and murder cases are outstanding and pending investigation in the country because of failure of the justice system to conduct forensic testing on exhibit samples as the country does not have proper equipment to do the necessary tests are disturbing and call for urgent action to be taken in addressing the situation.
In this day of modern technology, forensic science, which is generally referred to by some scholars as the application of science to the law, is the way to go in combating crime in the world where criminals have become sophisticated as they are taking advantage of the ever changing technology.
In a speech read on his behalf by Senior Assistant Commissioner Bernard Mhiripiri, Police Commissioner-General Augustine Chihuri revealed during a National Prosecuting Authority inaugural workshop in Bulawayo recently that more than 1 000 criminal cases were pending as exhibits were stuck at the forensic science laboratory with very few cases taken to laboratories in South Africa, which we were told happens on rare occasions.
This unfortunate development according to the prosecutors who attended the workshop had resulted in the shooting up of the backlog of cases with suspects in criminal cases such as rape, murder and fraud challenging the justice system over the delays to conclude their cases.
Some suspects according to the report, which is carried elsewhere in this paper, have spent many years stuck in remand prison because their cases could not be concluded as evidence samples were stuck at the laboratories.
In the same story it is reported that at least 15 women are raped everyday in the country and while some of the culprits have been successfully prosecuted and put behind bars, others have walked free after fighting the charges.
What is disturbing is that their acquittal was not influenced by their innocence, but lack of sufficient evidence to nail them as the laboratory is not functioning.
With such a situation, it is clear that there is a need to come up with strategies to put back on track the justice delivery system and also ensure that as a country we are abreast with modern ways of fighting crime.
However, we are encouraged that during the same workshop the chairman of the Department of Applied Biology in Biochemistry at the National University of Science and Technology, Mr Zephaniah Dhlamini, said the university was setting up a state-of-the-art DNA analysis laboratory with high technology equipment called the Applied Genetic Testing Centre, which has a mandate to deliver high quality services in human, livestock and pathogen identification.
It is our hope that the police will take advantage of the existence of the Nust facility, which will be commissioned next month, to deal with cases at hand as it would be more affordable than doing tests in foreign countries. DNA testing is very crucial in not only dealing with criminal cases and the highly publicised maintenance cases but victims of accidents as well.
It is against this background that we call on the authorities to invest heavily in the field of forensic science as it plays a crucial role in the application of science to the identification, collection, examination and analysis of data while preserving the integrity of the information.
It is also important to take into consideration that the number of criminal activities that involve the internet have gone up and therefore it is essential to come up with products that assist law enforcement agencies in accessing computer evidence to get to the bottom of cases.
