THE VITAL EVIDENCE ?

During my long professional career, I have been involved in a number of interesting cases, where a sound medical knowledge helped me to unravel crime. I will discuss one such case here.

Ram Avtar was a God fearing man living on the outskirts of Delhi. He had a small family; a religious wife, a fifteen year old son Raju and a twenty-one year old daughter Neetu. Ram Avtar was worried about Neetu as she was growing older rapidly, and he wanted to get her married. She was beautiful and moderately educated, but as Ram Avtar did not have enough money to pay as dowry, he was having difficulty in finding a suitable groom.

A beautiful, poor, young girl is often the target of bad elements in the neighborhood. Shamsher and Kishore, two bad characters of the locality, often teased her. Whenever Neetu would pass through the streets, they would pass filthy remarks on her. In several such remarks, they proposed marriage with her even. But Neetu knew them well and quite rightly ignored and avoided them.

But one day they transcended all limits of decency. It was about 10.00 pm on August 22, 1983. Neetu was returning home after visiting her aunt. Normally she wouldn't have been so late but the DTC bus in which she was traveling, went out of order. She could not get an alternative transport for quite some time. Finally she decided to walk home as she could not afford an auto rickshaw.

Shamsher and Kishore were drinking at the local pub, round the corner. By the time they saw Neetu arrive, they were quite tipsy. They staggered towards her as she advanced towards her house.

One of them caught hold of her dupatta (Dupatta is a small band of cloth used in India by the girls to cover breasts) and pulled it while the other tried to touch her breasts. He managed to lay his hand on her left breast and even succeeded in stealing a kiss on her cheeks. Naturally this enraged her and she started calling for help. Ramavtar came out of the house and as soon as he saw the two youths and his disheveled daughter, he understood the whole story and instinctively started beating them. He also raised an alarm, on hearing which many residents came out of their houses. They also gave them a sound thrashing and later dragged both of them to the police station.

The police swung into action and registered a case under Section 354 on the Indian penal Code (which deals with “indecent assault on women”). The case did not drag on for long. Eight residents  of the colony, besides Ramavtar and Neetu, gave evidence against Shamsher and Kishore. Against such an overwhelming evidence, the court found no difficulty in prosecuting both of them. They were sentenced to six months of rigorous imprisonment.

When the two criminals were being dragged to jail, they openly swore to get even with Ramavtar and Neetu. Many people heard their threats, but none took them seriously as they were petty criminals and could not do much harm to them.

On January 14, 1986, the unexpected happened. Ramavtar's wife and son were away on a marriage. Only Ramavtar and Neetu were at home. At 6.00 am when the milkman knocked at Ramavtar's door, there was no response. Normally the milkman would have gone away but he had to collect the payment, which was already delayed by a week.

When there was no response even after 5 minutes, the milkman got suspicious and informed the neighbors. Soon many people collected outside. Someone informed the police. When the police broke open the door, they found a horrible scene. Ramavtar was found dead on his bed, his head badly mangled. Neetu was lying stark naked, spread-eagled on the floor. There was a gag in her mouth and foam at her nostrils. Her genitals were bleeding. Anyone with a rudimentary  knowledge of crime could see that she had been sexually assaulted a number of times. The window of the room was ajar. It appeared that the criminals had escaped from the window.

A detailed enquiry could not reveal much. A faint lead came from one neighbor, Satbir. He said that on the night of January 13-14, he had got up to urinate twice, sometime in the night. For urination, he had to go to his backyard, from where he could clearly see Ramavtar's house. He usually got up in the night to urinate and he couldn't help but see Ramavtar's house, as it lay exactly at the back of his house.

Normally the lights in Ramavtar's house used to be off, but last night, when he went to urinate for the second time, he found that the lights were on. He was quite drowsy initially, but he noticed that the lights were flickering. It appeared that someone was moving about with a torch. It was a strange sight, but he did not give it much importance, as no sound was coming from there. He thought that their electricity may have failed and they were looking for something, probably a candle.

The police asked him for more information, but he could not reveal more. Finally they came to me for help. I saw the scene of the crime and listened to Satbir's versions. The police inspector was standing besides me when I was interrogating him. The police inspector again asked him if he could remember the time when he saw those flickering lights. Clearly if he could remember the time, the police would know the exact time of murder, down to the last minute. But Satbir had not looked at the clock and try hard as he would, he could not remember the time. It could have been 1 am, 2 am or even 5.15 am. He just did not know the time. The already faint clue was becoming fainter.

I looked at my watch. It was 8.15 am now. Tired of interrogation, Satbir asked to be permitted to go to the urinals. I asked him if he had gone to the urinals again after seeing those lights. He answered in the negative. I produced a flask from my bag and asked him to urinate in that. The police officer was surprised at this strange request, but I told him that everything could become clear soon.

When Shamsher and Kishore were rounded up for investigation, they came up with an iron-strong alibi. They were in Chandigarh the previous night and had landed in Delhi only at 3.00 am, on January 14. They had bus tickets to prove this. When the driver and conductor of the bus were contacted, they affirmed that Shamsher and Kishore had indeed traveled on that bus that night. With the time of murder not yet fully solved, it seemed difficult to implicate them for murder, although the police had a strong hunch that Shamsher and Kishore were the ones who had murdered them out of revenge.

The police inspector came to me and asked if I could say anything about the time of murder. On hearing the latest developments, I realized that in the light of fresh revelations, the calculation of the time of murder had become vital now. I brought out the flask of urine, measured the volume of urine and told him that Ramavtar and Neetu had been murdered at 4.35 am on January 14.

This took the police officer by surprise. Indeed if my calculation was correct, he could implicate Shamsher and Kishore in the murder, because by that time they were already in Delhi. In fact, if the time of murder was found to be earlier than 3.00 am (the time when Shamsher and Kishore landed in Delhi), his task would have become a lot more difficult. He asked me how I had calculated the time of death of Ramavtar and Neetu, from Satbir's urine. In fact, initially he thought that I was joking. But like a good old medical detective, I wanted to keep my secrets. I told him that I would reveal my calculations in the court only. The court duly acknowledged my scientific evidence and both Shamsher and Kishore were sent to jail for life.

Now, let me share this secret with the readers. All medical people know that our kidneys produce 1 ml of urine in 1 minute. Thus, in a day we produce about 1440 ml of urine. When the bladder accumulates about 300-400 ml of urine, we feel an urge to go to the urinals.

When Satbir got up in the night to urinate, he emptied his bladder completely. We can be sure of that. Now what is important is that his kidneys started pouring exactly 1 ml of urine per minute into his urinary bladder. When at 8.15 am, I took his urine in my flask, its volume was 220 ml. It meant that Satbir had emptied his bladder 220 minutes earlier, i.e. 3 hours and 40 minutes  earlier. When this time was subtracted from the time the urine sample was taken (which was 8.15 am), I got the required time, which was 4.35 am. This meant that Satbir must have got up at 4.35 am (for the second time) to urinate and it was at that time when he saw strange lights in Ramavtar's house.

Here Satbir's kidneys worked as effective clocks for me. The human body works in a rhythmic fashion and if we know how to make use of this rhythm, we can unravel seemingly unsolvable mysteries.