Can DNA Bill Can Be Misused For Caste-Based Profiling

Table of Contents

What is DNA?

DNA, or deoxyribonucleic acid, is the hereditary material in humans and almost all other organisms.
Nearly every cell in a person’s body has the same DNA.
Most DNA is located in the cell nucleus, but a small amount of DNA can also be found in the mitochondria

The information in DNA is stored as a code made up of four chemical bases.
Human DNA consists of about 3 billion bases.
More than 99% of those bases are the same in all people.

DNA profiling (also called DNA fingerprinting) is the process of determining an individual’s DNA characteristics.

The committee, in its draft report, pointed out that
The DNA profiles can reveal extremely sensitive information of an individual such as pedigree, skin colour, behaviour, illness, health status and susceptibility to diseases.
“Under the provisions of the Bill, access to such intrusive information can be misused to specifically target individuals and their families with their own genetic data.
This is particularly worrying as it could even be used to incorrectly link a particular caste/community to criminal activities,”

The report has also red-flagged disregard to an individual’s privacy and other safeguards.
The Bill proposes to store DNA profiles of suspects, undertrials, victims and their relatives for future investigations.
“While there is a good case for a DNA database of convicts, so that repeat offenders may be easily identified,
There is no legal or moral justification for a database with DNA of the other categories as noted above, given the high potential for misuse”

In the Bill, if a person is arrested for an offence that carries punishment up to seven years, investigation authorities must take the person’s written consent before taking the DNA sample.
But this consent, the draft report flags, is only “perfunctory.”
“The Bill refers to consent in several provisions, but in each of those, a magistrate can easily override consent, thereby in effect, making consent perfunctory.
There is also no guidance in the Bill on the grounds and reasons of when the magistrate can override ”

The Bill permits retention of DNA found at a crime scene in perpetuity, even if conviction of the offender has been overturned.
The committee has urged the government to amend the provisions to ensure that if the person has been found innocent his DNA profile has to be removed immediately from the data bank.

The committee has questioned the necessity for storage of such DNA profiles, pointing out that this violates the fundamental right to privacy and does not serve any public purpose.
The committee has recommended that independent scrutiny must be done of the proposals to destroy biological samples and remove DNA profiles from the database.

Loopholes apart, the Bill is urgently required as its applications would be to enable identification of missing children.
As per the National Crime Records Bureau, annually 1,00,000 children go missing.
The Bill will also help in identifying-
Unidentified deceased, including disaster victims and
Apprehend repeat offenders for heinous crimes such as rape and murder.