Fear of the False: Forensic Science and the Law of Crime in Colonial South Asia (Corpus Juris: the Humanities in Politics and Law)

Fear of the False uncovers colonial South Asia's critical role in the development of forensic science.Around 1900, the government of British India created a web of institutions for the scientific detection of crime.Driven by anxieties about "native mendacity," newly minted forensic analysts focused on uncovering faked evidence planted by South Asians.These experts, joining toxicologists known as "chemical examiners," were supposed to extract objective, scientific truth in the service of British justice.But in trying to counteract the presumed tendency of colonized peoples to lie, the system enabled widespread misconduct by state experts, increasing the risk of wrongful convictions of South Asian defendants.Through scrupulously documented legal cases, Mitra Sharafi reveals that colonial dynamics put special pressure on the relationship between truth and justice.Examining falsity on both sides of the law through the use of testing to (mis)identify poisons, blood, and spermatozoa, as well