  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.
