Nashik: Expansion of the premises of the regional Forensic Science Laboratory (FSL), filling up the vacant posts there, starting a smaller forensic science laboratory at Dhule and overall functioning of the lab were the issues discussed during the visit of Hemant Nagrale, director general of legal and technical wing of Maharashtra police, here on Monday.Nagrale took stock of the functioning of the forensic lab and expressed satisfaction over the work.Deputy director of the FSL B P Morey said, “The visit was brief and revolved around the working of the lab. Issues related to the expansion of the lab, filling the vacant posts also featured during the review meeting.”On an average the forensic lab gets 5,000 samples from roughly 2,000 cases for examination every month.“Given the huge number of samples coming to the biological, toxicology, general analytical and instrumentation, tape authentication and speaker identification (TASI) and prohibition and excise and DNA divisions, we have proposed additional land of four acres for the lab,” said Morey.FSL Nashik premises is set up on 1.5 acres of land given to it by Maharashtra Engineering Research Institute (MERI) a few years back. The additional four acres have also been sought from the same institute for further expansion.Morey added, “A mini lab is also proposed for Dhule district. The examination of samples related to biology and toxicology will be done at the min lab in Dhule. Such samples coming from Nandurbar district will also be examined there.”With respect to the vacant posts at the FSL, Morey said, “DG Nagrale has indicated that the posts would be filled soon.”Four posts of additional director, additional director (DNA), additional director of (cyber tape and speaker), 28 posts of assistant chemical analyzers and others are vacant. There are a total 128 total approved posts, out of which 57 are vacant.Nonetheless, the FSL Nashik is making sincere efforts to ensure that there is no pendency of any samples coming to the lab. The officials said that as of now there was no pending investigation and all the new samples coming to the lab were being examined within scheduled time.

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