FSL to hire temporary staff to clear 40,000 pending cases in Maharashtra

An official said that Additional Chief Secretary (Home) Sudhir Shrivastava approved the hiring of nearly 375 people on temporary posts in October. “Director General S P Yadav had informed the government about the need for more people to ensure that the backlog of cases is taken care of. Currently, across the state, there are a total of nearly 40,000 cases that have been sent by police to the FSL but are yet to be tested,” a senior official said.

When contacted, acting director of Maharashtra FSL Krishna Kulkarni said: “It is true that we will be conducting exams for 375 people who will be hired on contract for a year to exclusively deal with pending cases. Apart from the 375 people, the contracts of 164 people working in the cyber department has also been extended for a year. The exams will be held next month and we should have the employees by December.”

Kulkarni added that the current staff will be looking at the cases they receive on a day-to-day basis, while the hired staff will focus on the backlog. “We are hopeful that by the end of next year the pendency will be down to zero. Our aim is to ensure that henceforth all reports are sent to police stations within 45 days so that they can use it as evidence right at the chargesheet stage,” said a senior FSL official.

A police official said, “There are several cases in which we have sent evidence to FSL but have not received reports in spite of sending several reminders. Sometimes the report comes after the chargesheet has been filed. If we receive the pending reports in time, it will be of great help.”

An official said that departments like Biology receive over 1,000 samples per month across the state and as a result over the years the pendency has gone up to 12,000 cases. For the toxicology department, we received around 1,735 samples last month. “Even if there is some problem in one month, the cases can pile up quickly,” added the official.

It will be the first time that exams for FSL would be conducted using the Optical Mark Recognition (OMR) system in which there is minimum human intervention and the results are sent to the applicants directly. “This will ensure that there are no allegations of any favours being done to any candidate since there is hardly any human intervention in the process,” the official added.