Preventing Spoliation of Evidence with Blockchain: A Perspective from South Asia

Abstract: Evidence destruction and tempering is a time-tested tactic to protect the powerful perpetrators, criminals, and corrupt officials. Countries where law enforcing institutions and judicial system can be comprised, and evidence destroyed or tampered, ordinary citizens feel disengaged with the investigation or prosecution process, and in some instances, intimidated due to the vulnerability to exposure and retribution. Using Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLT), such as blockchain, as the underpinning technology, here we propose a conceptual model - 'EvidenceChain', through which citizens can anonymously upload digital evidence, having assurance that the integrity of the evidence will be preserved in an immutable and indestructible manner. Person uploading the evidence can anonymously share it with investigating authorities or openly with public, if coerced by the perpetrators or authorities. Transferring the ownership of evidence from authority to ordinary citizen, and custodianship of evidence from susceptible centralized repository to an immutable and indestructible distributed repository, can cause a paradigm shift of power that not only can minimize spoliation of evidence but human rights abuse too. Here the conceptual model was theoretically tested against some high-profile spoliation of evidence cases from four South Asian developing countries that often rank high in global corruption index and low in human rights index.