By Nityanjali Bulsu
In a bid to make crime detection faster and strengthen scientific investigation, the Maharashtra government has decided to increase the number of mobile forensic laboratories operating in the state. The fleet, which earlier had 21 vans, has now been expanded to 59, an official confirmed on Saturday.
Maharashtra had already taken the lead in this area earlier this year. On January 27, Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis had launched the first batch of 21 mobile forensic vans, making Maharashtra the first state in the country to do so. With the new expansion, these facilities have now been extended to almost every important city and police division across the state.
In Mumbai itself, the vans have been deployed at several key points including Chembur, Bandra, Kandivali, Byculla and Nagpada, while another has been placed with the Railway Commissionerate. Other major urban centres like Navi Mumbai, Pune, Pimpri-Chinchwad, Thane, Nagpur, Nashik, Solapur, Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar, Amravati and many districts have also received their own forensic vans, pushing the total number of such units to 59.
An official press note issued on Friday said that each of these vehicles is fitted with modern forensic equipment — ranging from bio-chemical and chemical kits to biological, physical and digital tools. These advanced instruments allow the teams to directly collect crucial evidence from crime scenes, instead of relying mainly on witness accounts or preliminary police testimony.
The Directorate of Forensic Science Laboratories mentioned that the vans have already been put to use in a variety of cases across Maharashtra and, so far, have helped gather 3,432 separate pieces of evidence. Officials believe this move has added greater transparency to the process of evidence collection, while also helping speed up the task of establishing guilt in criminal cases.
Authorities said that since criminals are now constantly coming up with new and more complex methods, traditional methods of investigation are no longer enough. Earlier, probes used to be highly dependent on eyewitness accounts and limited forensic use, especially DNA testing, which often slowed down the entire process. With the introduction of mobile forensic labs, investigators can now quickly collect and analyze all types of material evidence directly from the spot, giving them a much stronger base to build their cases.