Crime investigation
Half of DNA samples in rape cases are ‘half cases’
According to police ‘half case’ DNA sample tests delay the filing of charge sheets in rape cases.
The rape of a 9-year-old child in capital’s Banani area about three months ago had caused quite some noise. However, no one could be arrested under that case yet. After changing hands twice, the case is now being investigated by the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) of Police.
Police says that DNA sample of the child has been sent for tests following the legal obligations in proving rape cases. However, no DNA samples of the accused could be collected as he was not being arrested.
That means the samples of this sensational rape case are left as a ‘half case’. As described in DNA Lab lingo, rape cases in which DNA samples of only the victim and the crime scene objects are submitted called half cases or incomplete samples. Meanwhile, when the DNA samples of both the victim and the accused are submitted for testing, they are called ‘full cases’.
Sources from the ministry of women and children affairs said that 2,191 DNA samples have been collected at the eight divisional screening laboratories across the country in 11 months from January to November last year.
As many as 1,086 of those are ‘half cases’ and the remaining 1,105 are ‘full cases’. According to police, ‘half case’ DNA sample tests delay the filing of charge sheets in rape cases. The trial procedure gets dragged as well.
Profiling in Dhaka only
There are eight divisional DNA screening laboratories across the country set up under the ‘Multi-Sectoral Programme on Violence against Women (4th phase)’ project by the ministry of women and child affairs.
In Dhaka, there’s the National Forensic DNA Profiling Laboratory (NFDPL) is on the 10th floor of the Nuclear Medicine Building of Dhaka Medical College Hospital.
The other seven laboratories are at the medical college hospitals in Sylhet, Barishal, Khulna, Faridpur, Rajshahi, Chattogram and Rangpur cities. However, DNA profiling is done only at the lab in Dhaka. The other seven labs just collect the samples and then send them to Dhaka for profiling.
Apart from that, there’s another DNA profiling laboratory at the CID. However, the samples are not separated as ‘half case’ or ‘full case’ there. They just receive the victim’s sample and profile that. Last year, samples from 5,042 cases had been sent to the CID laboratory. Of them, 4,080 were rape cases.
DNA test mandatory
Two incidents of gang rape in Sylhet and Noakhali in 2020 had caused quite a scandal. Later, the then government fixed death sentence as the maximum penalty for rape and made DNA test mandatory to identify the accused in rape cases under the Women and Children Repression Prevention Act, 2000.
The victim of the Banani rape case is the child from a low-income family. Promising her money for delivering a bag to some place, a man took the child to another place and raped her.
Police have collected CCTV footage from a nearby shop in this incident. The footage of the child being taken from the road was spotted there. Although the footage of the suspected accused has been collected, he could not be identified.
There was another case of a woman aged 65 being gang-raped in Suhrawardy Udyan on 7 September last year and no suspect has been identified yet.
The case has been transferred from Shahbagh Police Station to the Women Support and Investigation Division. Just like the Banani rape case, victim’s DNA sample from this case as well has been kept as a half-case in the laboratory of Dhaka Medical College Hospital.
Five labs have more ‘half cases’
Data from eight laboratories across the country shows that ‘half cases’ account for almost half of the total samples sent for DNA testing in rape cases.
There are more ‘half cases’ than ‘full cases’ in Rajshahi, Rangpur, Khulna, Barishal, and Sylhet labs. Meanwhile, the number of rape case samples sent in Dhaka and Chittagong labs was comparatively higher in the months of September, October and November.
In the 11 months from January to November last year, a total of 786 rape cases were received at the DNA laboratory of Dhaka Medical College Hospital. Of these, 596 were ‘full cases’ and 190 were ‘half cases’.