KARACHI, Aug 5: In a move to build up their investigation capacity, the Sindh police have acquired forensic lights which will help them in finding evidence that remains invisible under normal lighting to the naked eye, it emerged on Sunday.

Officials said the import of these lights had been made in line with a recent programme of forensic division upgrade, which included forensic laboratory expansion and acquisition of latest technology to enhance investigation accuracy.

“The forensic lights will help us in collecting maximum evidence at crime scenes, as under the current practice the evidence invisible to the naked eye is usually lost,” said an official at the forensic division of the Sindh police.

He said the gadget would be much helpful in the investigation of serious crimes, particularly those related to violence against women, in which suspects got off scot-free just because police investigators faced difficulties in finding evidence.

“In modern policing and investigation, forensic lights are used by law-enforcement and forensic agencies,” the official said. “The gadget produces an ultra-high intensity light for the search and documentation of a wide variety of evidence types including fingerprints, body fluids, trace evidence [evidence that occurs when different objects contact one another] and bone fragments.”

Worth more than Rs2 million, the lights were the first such inclusion in the Sindh police forensic equipment, he said.

The official said that the lights would also help police in investigating terrorism cases as they made the collection of micro-level evidences easy.

“We will train nearly a dozen officials of our division to handle these lights,” said Muneer Sheikh, additional inspector-general of Sindh police forensic division. “The lights will be maintained and handled by the forensic division,” he added.

However, the officer said, assistance would be provided to every segment of the police investigation in their respective cases.

The procurement of forensic lights seemed part of a plan often talked about by cabinet members and senior police officers to equip the law-enforcement agency with latest gadgets. Earlier, the multimillion cellphone caller location technology — which is seen as a major breakthrough in the upgrade of the police investigation system — was acquired by the CID police. The technology will help police in tracing not only those involved in kidnap for ransom and extortion cases but also militants.

The police budget has been increased by more than 25 per cent -- from Rs30.47 billion in 2011-12 to Rs38.44 billion in 2012-13.