This talk examines the work of British India’s chemical examiners (1879-1947) not only in detecting criminal poisoning, but also in identifying cases of fabricated evidence in which poison was planted by colonized subjects to frame adversaries. Colonial stereotypes about ‘native mendacity’ powered the turn to forensic science during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: if the courts could rely on scientific experts and test results, they could sidestep the perjury and forgery that was believed to be rife in ‘this land of lies.’ The belief that colonized subjects might try to frame their rivals by planting poison also produced a heightened awareness of the risk of wrongful convictions, at least when produced by lab work. The talk features cases of mineral poisons planted in liver and stomach samples where the form or location of the poison was wrong. It also examines debates over best practices in the sealing and preservation of forensic samples. Ever mistrustful of non-elite South Asians, British officials were convinced that lower-caste postal and railway workers would add arsenic to unaccompanied forensic samples traveling to regional toxicology labs. The talk draws upon the annual reports of the chemical examiners from the British Library and intra-departmental correspondence from the National Archives of India.
