KARACHI, March 29: Out of all the suicide bombings carried out throughout the country in the recent past that have claimed hundreds of lives, in not a single case have the police and other law-enforcement agencies been able to identify the suicide bombers through forensic science, admitted a senior investigator.

Informers or intelligence reports have played a key role in identifying some of the suicide bombers in recent acts of terrorism, but the fact remains that the identity of a significant number of the suicide bombers remains a mystery, an investigator observed.

“They don’t go to the Nadra office to get a CNIC, nor do they travel by air where they could be photographed at the immigration counter. They simply don’t exist on the official record,” observed a counter-terrorism expert referring to the way suicide bombers operate.

The recently-inaugurated Automated Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS), costing Rs1,107.014 million, isn’t of much help when it comes to the identification of suicide bombers.

“They are feeding the data (fingerprints) of the common criminal elements involved in petty crimes ending up at police stations. Suicide bombers are coming afresh. They don’t have any type of criminal record, nor do they end up at police stations,” remarked a senior law-enforcer.

It is worth noting that the US-funded AFIS project was primarily part of the war against terror.

“Here in Pakistan, we don’t go from the crime scene to the criminal, but in fact the opposite happens, ie local investigators go from criminals to the crime scene,” a senior investigator explained.

Elucidating, he said that in the absence of reliable forensic expertise, the crime scene usually does not bear much importance, apart from picking up some leads like the registration number of the vehicle used or any other piece of evidence.

Washing away evidence

Lack of understanding about the importance of forensic science in the criminal investigation process among the police and other law-enforcement agencies across the country was aptly demonstrated on December 27, 2007, when the crime scene was washed outside Rawalpindi’s Liaquat Bagh following the gun and bomb attack in which Benazir Bhutto was killed.

Local police didn’t waste much time in hosing down the crime scene; the responsibility of carrying out such a blunder is yet to be fixed.

“In case of a suicide bombing, it is seldom that fingerprints are obtained. And if some prints are obtained from the crime scene, it is hard to establish if the prints obtained belong to the suicide bomber, as other fatalities also occur in the blast. At this stage we become helpless as for this purpose we need to have DNA fingerprinting data, which is just not there,” said Prof Ghulam Ali Mundrawala, head of the forensic department at the Sindh Medical College, DUHS.

“We should have DNA fingerprinting labs set up at different medical colleges, which is not a costly affair and could be initiated with a little initiative,” Prof Mundrawala said, adding that emphais is being laid at the reconstruction of the face, which is often misleading and does not carry scientific significance.

Any investigation begins with picking up the usual suspects and activating the informers’ network.

Some of the Karachi police’s senior investigators have a reputation of having an extensive network of informers, which considerably helps them in solving cases of various natures.

However, with the advent of cellular phone technology, a SIM card found from the crime scene or interception of any cellular communication pertaining to the particular act of terrorism by intelligence agencies also sometimes proves to be a good starting point in any particular case, the investigator said.

The lack of forensic experts’ involvement can also be gauged from the fact that in Benazir Bhutto’s case, her medical report was made by a team of doctors that did not have a single forensic expert in it, said a professional.