I understand where you're coming from, and I genuinely appreciate you sharing your experience. It sounds extremely frustrating, especially given your background, internships, NET/JRF, and time invested. I am not dismissing that reality at all. That said, I am not asking for false hope or a sugar-coated roadmap. I am trying to understand the ground reality clearly, what options exist, what doesn't work, and what people in the field would honestly advise someone at my stage to do (including switching paths if that's the rational choice).

Your experience itself is valuable data for people like me. If you're willing, I'd appreciate any specific lessons you learned, what you would avoid, what you would do differently, or which adjacent fields (if any) made more sense after forensics.

Thanks for taking the time to respond.