New Delhi, July 21 - Delhi High Court has stressed the need for investigating agencies to conduct 'scientific' probes using 'state-of-the-art equipment' to ensure that the prosecution's stand is not weakened due to lack of evidence, as in the Sanjeev Nanda BMW hit-and-run case.

On Monday, the court reduced the sentence of Nanda, convicted for mowing down six people with his BMW in 1999, from five to two years.

In his 274-page judgement, Justice Kailash Gambhir said: 'Courts have quite often observed that though they are convinced that the accused is guilty but they have to acquit him by giving benefit of doubt due to failure of the investigators in properly conducting the investigation.'

Justice Gambhir said the probe would have been effective if it had been done in a scientific manner.

'Scientific inputs help the investigators in solving a number of cases of crime.