Forensic lab raises doubts on examiner's signature ; MCSCC exam continues to haunt
Source: The Sangai Express

Imphal, January 12 2018: Truth Labs: Forensic Services Kolkata has raised serious doubts over the genuineness of the examiner's signature appended on two answer scripts of the Manipur Civil Services Combined Competitive (Main) Exam 2016.After obtaining five answer scripts (photostat copies) of the exam through an RTI application, a group of civil services aspirants sent the same copies to the Kolkata based forensic laboratory to examine whether the answer sheets were examined by a single examiner or not.

Notably, many candidates have been contending that there is a wide variation in the signature of the examiner of the essay paper which according to the MPSC was evaluated by only one expert/ examiner.

Out of the five signatures (marked Ql to Q5) appended on the five answer scripts, the Truth Labs: Forensic Services Kolkata opined that the signatures marked on Ql, Q2 and Q5 were all written by one and the same person.

However, the laboratory report says that it is not possible to express any opinion on signatures marked Q3 and Q4.It says that signature marked Q3 shows some discontinuity, hence not suitable for examination.

Similarly, the signature marked Q4 is slow in execution and defective reproduction and as such opinion could not be expressed.

Answer scripts of the signatures marked Ql to Q5 bear code numbers 62938, 93686, 61384, 86815 and 50950 respectively.

Incidentally, Truth Labs: Forensic Services Kolkata is India's first independent forensic science laboratory whose advisory board has former Chief Justice of India, former Chairman of the Law Commission, former Vigilance Commissioner etc as members.

Upon consulting the experts of the laboratory regarding whether they can give a definite opinion if the signature marked Q4 belongs to a different person other than the examiner, they maintained that they can give a definite opinion only when the specimen/original signature of the examiner is provided to them, according to Group of Aspirants convenor Arbind Salam.

Meanwhile, pointing out that they could send and get verified only five signatures, the Group of Aspirants has claimed that many more such cases of variation in examiner's signature would be detected if a thorough investigation is done into the matter.

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