KARACHI: The Sindh government is still awaiting approval from the Defence Housing Authority (DHA) to get a piece of land to establish its allencompassing forensic lab to improve the capability of prosecution in the criminal justice system, it emerged on Monday.

Officials said the provincial home ministry, after receiving a request from the Sindh police for a 4,000-sq-yd plot of land in DHA, had sent the request to the authorities concerned.

The army authorities had assured the chief minister that the request wouldsoon be granted.

It is learnt that the Sindh government had rerouted its earlier plans for establishing its Rs2 billion forensic lab from Jamshoro to Karachi after it was advised that the provincial capital would be more convenient for police authorities where top forensic experts would not hesitate to reside.

This forensic facility, as the Sindh police hope, is extremely important in order to improve the force`s capability in detecting and solving criminal cases. It will include major facilities, including DNA testing, ballistics, and an explosives lab etc.

Officials said a re-appropriation order amounting to Rs47.59 millionhad been issued by the provincial finance ministry vis-a-vis the provincial police`s effort to have an effective explosives lab.

They said nomination of two army experts for the procurement committee, however, was still awaited as is the training request for forensic staff.

It is learnt that the revised PC-I for the explosives lab had been submitted along with a PC-I for establishing divisionalballisticslabs.

Senior ofhcials of the Sindh police saidtheforcehadbeentryingtoestablish a state-of-the-art forensic facility in the province for years. However, several hiccups had been witnessed along the way, and they have still notbeen fully removed.

Improving the forensic facility had been a vital part of the apex committee`s agenda. Three months ago, a senior military official had informed Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah that the land required for the project would soon be acquired from the DHA.

`We hope we will get that piece of land soon,` said a senior official in the Sindh government.

`It [forensic lab] is required to improve the criminal justice system and prosecute criminals through modern investigation tools. At present it is extremely hard to do this,` said a source in the police.

Officials said despite having a mod-est forensic facility, in cases like the Baldia factory fire, they had to rely on experts from Punjab.

At present, the police largely rely on `experts` from within their own ranks in their current facility, which was originally called the criminalistic division a few years ago, which has units for digitalforensics, audiovisual analysis, chemical samples testing, investigating crime scenes, firearms and ballistics, forensic photography, automated fingerprint identification system and latent fingerprint.

Ballistics cross-matching, which the provincial police are at present capable of conducting at their facility, ena-bles investigators to establish the history of weapons or shells used in a crime. However, the increasing crime rates mal(e it hard for the force to examine every case in minimum possible time.

The Sindh home ministry has recently increased funds for crime investigation by around 38 per cent, which, officials said, was to improve the investigation of heinous crimes and acts of terrorism, as lack of funds had been a primary hindrance in prosecuting suspects.

The budget of the cost ofinvestigation has been increased from Rs264m in the last fiscal year to Rs364m during the current financial year.