A Kuki rights organization on Thursday filed an affidavit in the Supreme Court challenging a recent confidential report submitted by the National Forensic Science University (NFSU), Gujarat, which concluded that the audio tapes – originating from a whistleblower who claim they contain ethnic conflict-inciting phone conversations of former Manipur Chief Minister N Biren Singh – are being “edited and edited”.
The Kuki Organization for Human Rights Trust (KOHRT) told the apex court that the Manipur police had sent incomplete, “excised clips” to the NFSU instead of the complete recording.
Searched for SIT probe
The rights organization has asked a court-monitored Special Investigation Team (SIT) to probe the matter.
While hearing the matter earlier this month, the Supreme Court Bench took cognizance of the NFSU’s findings. It then directed that the report be submitted to the petitioner and granted a period of two weeks to submit an affidavit.
In an affidavit, KOHRT chairman HS Mate said that after the court ordered that the clips in question be sent to the NFSU, the forwarding agency – Bureau of Police, Cyber Crime, Manipur – “transferred only four short, clipped clips” that together ran just under five minutes “instead of the full 46-48 minutes”.
“As a result, NFSU could not verify the continuity or authenticity of the original record and even the Central Forensic Science Laboratory could not examine it for the same reason,” Mr Mate said in the affidavit.
“Shocking Discovery”
Mr Mate explained that since they had submitted the full audio recording and did not know what the forwarding agency was sending to the forensic laboratory in Gandhinagar, they “truly believed” that the entire recording had been sent to the laboratory for examination. “It was therefore shocking to later discover that the audio clips actually transmitted were incorrect, incomplete and did not represent the original recording,” he added.
The KOHRT chairman went on to say that NFSU limited its analysis to metadata and tamper detection and declared the clips “manipulated” or “AI generated” based only on discontinuities and traces of processing without performing auditory or spectrographic voice comparisons.
While KOHRT presented audio recordings of the leak that allegedly implicated Mr. Singh in fomenting conflict in the state, it also presented a forensic analysis of the recordings by Truth Labs, which found no continuity errors in the recordings and further concluded that there was a 93% probability that the voice in the recording was that of Mr. Singh.
Truth Labs, a private non-profit organisation, was established as an independent forensic science laboratory in Hyderabad in 2007 by a group of former directors of central and state forensic science laboratories and is supported by the Supreme Court, at least six high courts, trial courts, the police, the Central Bureau of Investigation, the National Bureau of Investigation, the Central Bureau of Investigation, the Central Reserved Department and the State Police20 PSUs, apart from other authorities, according to their website.
Mr Mate argued that, in contrast, the Truth Labs report reflected “much greater scientific rigor and probative value, while the Gandhinagar report suffers from procedural and methodological flaws arising from the incomplete material submitted”.
The KOHRT chairman further called for a judicial inquiry into the audio recordings by the SIT, arguing that the Supreme Court itself should not “enter into the technical exercise of ascertaining whether the audio recording is tampered with or not”. This fell under the purview of the investigating agency, adding that a properly constituted SIT would be “best placed to ascertain the genuineness and larger criminal conspiracy behind the leak”.
Mr Mate added that “the inconclusiveness of the forensic report cannot in itself be considered a reason to suppress the investigation at the threshold”. He went on to say that even if a thorough investigation is completed and no material is ultimately found, then authorities should file a final report under the law, but “criminal proceedings must be initiated based on the audio recording and the Truth Labs report so that the truth can come out.”
Published – 21 Nov 2025 01:35 IST
