CNN reports that the lone gunman reportedly taken alive in the recent attack on Mumbai, India has been subjected to a polygraph test:
[Mumbai Joint Police Commissioner of Crime Rakesh] Maria identified the suspect as Mohammed Ajmal Kasab, 21, from Faridkot village in the Okara district of Pakistan’s Punjab province. He is the son of Mohammed Amir Kasab, the police commissioner said.
Multiple law enforcement and intelligence sources familiar with the investigation said Kasab was put through a polygraph test and has also been interviewed by the FBI.
Maria said all 10 attackers were Pakistanis, which Pakistani officials have denied, blaming instead “stateless actors.”
While the polygraph may have some use as an interrogational prop with naive and gullible persons, it’s junk science of the highest order, and Indian investigators would be wise not to rely on it. But pseudoscience seems to be in vogue in India. The Times of London reports that the gunman, whom it identifies as Azam Amir Kasab, will also be injected with “truth serum”:
Indian police interrogators are preparing to administer a “truth serum” on the sole Islamic militant captured during last week’s terror attacks on Mumbai to settle once and for all the question of where he is from.
Rather than resorting to the magical thinking of lie detectors and truth serums, Indian authorities would be better served by using traditional investigative methods, which although they may require time, hard work, and critical thinking, deliver more reliable results.