Polygraph Test

Email sent to Chief Justice of India on 11-Aug-2014 as a followup email of 3-Jun-2014

Dear Chief Justice of India,

Pending cases against politicians specially law makers should be expeditiously concluded so that people of India can get rid of corrupt politicians sooner than later. 

India deserves to be number one country in the world. 

We cannot be number one unless we eliminate corruption from our society. 

We cannot eliminate corruption until we bar dishonest people from entering politics. 

We cannot remove dishonest politicians if we cannot build a case against them. 

We cannot build a case against corrupt politicians if we don't have proper evidence

We cannot have proper evidence unless police investigates

Police cannot investigate unless they get witness and forensic evidence

Police cannot get  witness and forensic evidence unless they are free from political interference

Police cannot be free from political interference so long corrupt politicians continue to be law maker

So, it is a vicious circle. The only way we can come out of this circle is by using lie-detector in every case. As part of proof of concept we can apply lie-detector or brain mapping on cases which are more than 5 years old. For sake of 1 billion Indians please device something so that investigation and trial can be completed in a year. 

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Date: Tue, 3 Jun 2014 14:52:43 +0530

Dear Chief Justice of India,

There are 32 million cases pending in different courts of India. Investigation and prosecution take ages to complete. Corruption of investigative agencies, political interference, hostile witness and dishonest lawyers make the situation worse. Thousands of crimes are not even registered for various reasons. Court monitored cases like CWG, 2G are taking years to come to logical conclusion.

In last 3 decades many social activists, professionals, intellectuals are trying hard to bring an end to corruption which spread at all levels of our life. But unfortunately they have limited success.  Last couple of years we have seen Anna Hazare and others are trying to pass an anti corruption bill in the parliament. I believe such bill is not going to eliminate corruption overnight. But we want to see end of corruption as soon as possible so that billions of rupees that are invested in various schemes are properly utilized to the benefit of common man.

The only way we can speed up conviction rate is by use of technology. One of them is polygraph test which is highly reliable. However there are two major concerns against polygraph test

1. False positive - The response of a truthful person is determined to be deceptive

2. False negative - The response of a deceptive person is determined to be truthful.

I am not overly concerned about false negative for two reasons. 1. Number of such cases will be low. 2. Such deceptive persons can be prosecuted again by conventional method of cross examination and witness. 

False positive situations can be eliminated beyond reasonable doubt if 

1. We carefully set the questions. 30% of the questions should be relevant to the issue or crime being investigated. The other questions should be  controlling questions which should be so generic and obvious that respondent cannot tell a lie
2. Question set must be approved by the court and must be given to the subject 7 days before the test. He must be given the opportunity to try out the questions by himself before sitting for the actual test. This will remove the nervousness factor of the subject.
3. The test should be conducted twice with a gap of 3 days and if the results are same on both occasions, it should be accepted by court without any further deliberation by respective lawyers and cross examination.
4. Test should be conducted in presence of a magistrate and should be video recorded

To begin with, polygraph test can be started in the following situations where both victim and accused have no criminal past. So, the chance of false positive is virtually zero and percentage of false negative would be from low to insignificant.

1. All IPC 498 related cases 
2. Domestic violence
3. Political violence
4. Charges against govt employees
5. Sexual harassment
6. Harassment by police, government employees, politicians
7. Small time bribe taker like traffic police, lower division clerks 
8. Family dispute

To sum up when technology is available we must close certain categories of cases within 7 days.