State fourth in nation to get voice analysis machine

Tribune News Service

Shimla, July 25

The state Directorate of Forensics Services has acquired a layered voice analysis (LVA) machine that detects 16 emotional elements in the voice of the subjects, including risk or sense of danger, cognitive dissonance, imagination and regret for giving information.

A database of a half million guilty subjects’ recordings was used to perfect the mathematical algorithm to make the instrument. It has been manufactured by a company from Israel.

The LVA machine helped the investigator to analyse the voice of a subject with three modes — face-to-face live recording of the voice with a microphone during an investigation, live recording during a phone call conversation and recorded material from any source such as television, radio, Internet, YouTube, Facebook and other social networking sites, said Director, State Forensics Science laboratory (SFSL), Arun Sharma. 

Asaf Bar Ilan from Israel also conducted a four-day workshop here on how to use the LVA tool. The event  concluded today.

Asaf Bar Ilan, who has more than two decades of experience in the use of the LVA technology, said the investigation tool was being used successfully by 44 countries, mostly by western and NATO. 

Himachal Pradesh is the fourth state in the country after Gujarat, Delhi and UP to acquire this technology.

The workshop was attended by faculty members from the Gujarat Forensic Sciences University, Gujarat, and experts from the SFSL. Criminal cases of different countries that were solved with the help of the LVA technology were also demonstrated.