By Amit Cowper

Gandhinagar, Jul 11 (IANS): Following a recommendation from the Union Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), the National Forensic Sciences University here has prepared a special forensic training module for the police.

The university will be training police personnel across the nation with offline as well as online modules on the latest crime and forensic methods, and the protocols to be followed.

"On the recommendations of the MHA, the NFSU had been entrusted last year to develop a special forensic training module for the police. While developing the module during the Covid-19 pandemic, we also developed an online version of the module. But the training module was not an entirely new thing for us in Gujarat, as the GSFU (before getting the national status) had prepared this module and had trained Gujarat police officers," S.O. Junare, Director, NFSU, Gandhinagar and Delhi campus, told IANS.

"Within a span of five years, we have already trained around 13,000 police personnel through this module regarding various forensic methods like cybercrime, DNA extraction, DNA profiling, financial cyber frauds, their methodology, forensic investigation and various other aspects. Almost 80 per cent of the trained personnel are from Gujarat Police," added Junare.

"These police officers, even though trained for crime investigation, don't necessarily know the latest forensic methods of detection, investigation, evidence collection, evidence transfer, data transfer etc. They need to be taught as much, as the criminals are constantly updating and upgrading themselves. To match them and even remain a step ahead of them is badly needed," said Junare.

"The Central ministry entrusted this responsibility to us (NFSU) to develop a mass and virtual training module for the police. Right now we have the programme in English and Hindi, but we are developing it in eight other languages," Junare told reporters during a presser on Saturday, which was held to brief about the inauguration programme of a centre of excellence on the NFSU campus.

Union Home Minister Amit Shah will inaugurate the Centre of Excellence for Research and Analysis of Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances on the Gandhinagar campus of the NFSU on July 12.

The minister will also visit the other dedicated laboratories on the NFSU campus.

The state-of-the-art centre of excellence has been established with the mission to extenuate the issues arising from illicit drug trafficking and narco terrorism. The latest technologies would be developed to identify designer drugs, precursor chemicals and other impurities in the illicit drugs seized by the law enforcement agencies.