Probative but Not Infallible: Reassessing the Evidentiary Weight of DNA Evidence ‎in Indian Criminal Trials

In the Indian criminal justice system, the most credible evidence is that of ocular testimony given directly by a person in court. The expert opinion evidence, on the other hand, be it scientific or otherwise, is considered of a lower classification, meaning that the courts will rely more on the testimony of the eyewitnesses than that of an expert. Forensic DNA profiling can generate random match probabilities of one in several billion and has, without displacing the hierarchy, destabilised it. What this article terms the primacy debate is the unresolved jurisprudential question of how a trial court ought to proceed when a biologically robust DNA profile stands in irreconcilable contradiction to mutually consistent eyewitness accounts. Based on the philosophy of evidence put forward by Haack’s foundationalist epistemology, Cohen’s distinction of Pascalian and Baconian probability, and Bayesian models of evidential inference, this paper questions the “myth of infallibility” that DNA evidence is surrounded by and the symmetrical myth of “sterling quality” that ocular testimony is surrounded by. A comparison of the American gatekeeping model crystallised in Daubert and the English common-law response epitomised by R. v. T, and a doctrinal excavation of Indian case law from Goutam Kundu to Rahul, shows that neither the Indian Evidence Act, 1872, nor the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam, 2023, provides the epistemic architecture to resolve ocular-scientific conflict. It concludes with a proposal for an Integrated Epistemic Matrix, a five-level procedural framework designed to weigh conflicting evidentiary pools in a structured, transparent and reviewable manner.