Karnataka’s Director General and Inspector General of Police, Praveen Sood, announced on October 26 that the state has received Rs 7 crore from the Union government to set up two more Narcotic Testing Facilities for testing of seized narcotic drug samples. 

“Glad to receive financial assistance of Rs 7 cr from MHA GOI for setting up two more forensic labs for testing of seized Narcotic drug samples expeditiously. Committed to war against drugs and speedier conviction of drug peddlers,” Sood said. “In addition to conviction, we have started attaching ill- gotten assets as proceeds of crime successfully,” he added. 

“We already had seven forensic labs in the state, but only one facility in Bengaluru had the Narcotics Testing Facility. Now, we will be setting up two more such facilities in forensic labs at Hubballi and Mangaluru,” Praveen Sood told TNM. He also said that with only one operational narcotics testing facility, the reports would take approximately six months. With the new units, the department hopes to bring down the time to two months and eventually to just a month. 

In April 2021, the Karnataka High Court had suggested the State and Union governments to have a separate Forensic Sciences Laboratory (FSL) in Karnataka to analyse narcotic drugs and contraband articles seized in offences registered under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act, 1985. During the hearing of a petition filed by Arjav Deepak Mehta, an accused in a case under the NDPS Act, the police had pointed out to the court that the State had only one FSL for analysis of all types of materials seized in criminal cases. Hence, the report of the analysis could not be expected in 15 days, as per the guidelines of Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB), due to huge pendency in FSL.