Biren Singh's Voice Sample: What the Supreme Court Said on Central Forensic Labs
New Delhi: The Supreme Court has criticised central forensic labs for failing to authenticate audio clips allegedly linking former Manipur Chief Minister N. Biren Singh to ethnic violence in the state.
LiveLaw has reported that it has asked the Union government to explore whether Singh could visit the National Forensic Science University, Gandhinagar, Gujarat, to give a voice sample.
Reports from the University found the 48-minute clip had been tampered with, making voice identification inconclusive.
The report said that the apex court questioned repeated delays and lack of clear findings, suggesting Singh provide a fresh voice sample directly. It also raised concerns about the evidentiary value of edited and secretly recorded audio. Calling the issue serious, the bench refused to close proceedings and asked the Union government to explain the shortcomings and clarify whether conclusive analysis is possible.
In May last year, a bench of former Chief Justice of India Sanjiv Khanna and Justice Sanjay Kumar had expressed dissatisfaction with the report of the Central Forensic Science Laboratory, Guwahati, and had asked for a fresh one. In August, the apex court directed the NFSL to take up the exercise after the CFSL report of the CFSL indicated no clear findings. Early this year, the court asked the NFSU to examine the entire clip and compare it with Singh's voice.
A bench comprising Justice Sanjay Kumar and Justice K. Vinod Chandran on April 6 asked why no central laboratory has been able to come up with conclusive findings.
In response to Justice Kumar noting from the report that the clip had been edited, advocate Prashant Bhushan, for the petitioner Kuki Organisation for Human Rights, said that it is an admitted fact that the audio was modified to remove the voice of the person who had recorded the audio secretly.
Justice Kumar also noted on the curiosity of a repeated spelling error.
"One thing we notice is, this is supposed to be a national university, and they say 'pandrive' and not 'pendrive'. I had a doubt whether I was under a misapprehension all these years, so I looked it up to see whether it's a pendrive or a pandrive. It is a pendrive. They don't know it's a pendrive? They call it a pandrive not once but several times. If this is the quality of our people then, the national universities, perhaps, need to do a little introspection," he said, according to LiveLaw.
The court asked Additional Solicitor General Aishwarya Bhati to ascertain why it was not possible for the NFSU to undertake a comparison.
Even earlier, a bench comprising the then Chief Justice of India D.Y. Chandrachud, Justice J.B. Pardiwala and Justice Manoj Misra had asked the petitioner to produce materials indicating the authenticity of the audio clips. The organisation had submitted the findings of the Truth Lab, which had said that there is a 93% match between the clip and Singh’s voice samples and there is a “high probability” that they are the same voice.
The Wire, in a series last year, had reported on clips from an audio tape, highlighting claims made by the person alleged to be Biren on the ethnic violence in the state that has killed over a hundred, injured several, and displaced at least 70,000 people belonging to the Kuki and Meitei communities.
The audio recordings had also been submitted to retired Justice Ajai Lamba, chairperson of the Judicial Commission on Manipur Violence set up by the Ministry of Home Affairs to probe the violence that broke out since May 3, 2024.
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