FORENSIC EFFICACY AND LIMITATIONS OF BEHAVIOURAL ATTRIBUTES AND BIOLOGICAL SAMPLES IN CRIMINAL PROFILING: A STUDY IN LIGHT OF THE CRIMINAL PROCEDURE (IDENTIFICATION) ACT, 2022

Abstract

For almost a hundred years, Indian criminal investigations depended on a solitary, concise regulation to permit the acquisition of a suspect's body as evidence: the Identification of Prisoners Act, 1920. The Criminal Procedure (Identification) Act, 2022 (CPIA) eliminates the restrictive inheritance and introduces an expansive directive that encompasses both fingerprints and iris scans, integrating handwriting, voice samples, and behavioral characteristics into a unified legal classification termed 'measurements.' This article poses the evidentiary worth of what the Act allows the state to gather correspond to the constitutional implications of its collection? Employing a doctrinal approach rooted in statutory interpretation, comparative case examination, and an analysis of forensic science literature, the article delineates the CPIA's divergence from its colonial antecedent, assesses the scientific validity of DNA profiling in contrast to the more tenuous foundations of narco-analysis, polygraphy, and brain-mapping, and scrutinizes the 2022 Act in relation to the protections against self-incrimination enshrined in Article 20(3) and the established right to privacy under Article 21. It concludes that although biological sampling, primarily DNA, possesses a justifiable, albeit flawed, evidentiary lineage acknowledged by the Supreme Court in cases from Krishan Kumar Malik to Pattu Rajan, the Act's inclusion of 'behavioural attributes' is incongruous with Selvi v. State of Karnataka, which eliminated consent-free psychological assessments from the state's investigative arsenal in 2010. The seventy-five-year detention period, specifically, conflicts with the proportionality criterion established in Puttaswamy. The article asserts that the efficacy claims of the CPIA are genuine but more limited than its creators imply, and that its constitutional longevity relies on protections judicial scrutiny, tiered retention, and a mandatory destruction protocol which the legislation presently delegates to executive judgment.