MASTERY OF THE PAW

On 31 November 1993, I dealt with one of the strangest cases of my life. A shrivelled object was brought to me from Madhya Pradesh, which looked very much like a mummified human hand (reproduce fig III-2 on page 40: Both figures are to be reproduced!). The police wanted me to tell them whatever I could, after examination of this hand. The story that the police gave me was quite bizarre. To understand the full implications of the case, I feel it necessary to tell my readers the details of the whole case.

The mummified hand (let us call it the "paw" for the sake of brevity) was recovered from the farm house of a multimillionaire land owner Bhiku Ram in Madhya Pradesh. He was 36 years of age and an influential land owner. He owned many properties in Madhya Pradesh as well as in several other states of the country. The farm house from where the paw was recovered was called Dilshaad farm house by Bhiku. It was very vast and ran into several acres. It was surrounded by vast jungles of Madhya Pradesh.

Bhiku was a married man, but like a typical multimillionaire he had several vices. He had several concubines who used to visit his farmhouse regularly. One of his favorites was Anita Bai. She was a good looking female, about 22 years in age, and had only a widowed mother at her home. She came into this profession mainly to support herself and her mother. Everybody in the locality knew about the relations between Bhiku and Anita Bai. They had intimate sexual relations.

Lately Anita Bai was demanding some more favours from Bhiku which he was denying. She wanted a house for her own as well as more cash per month. Bhiku thought it was too much. He was giving her about Rs 3,000 per month, and in his opinion, this amount was sufficient for Anita to support two people- herself and her mother. Moreover Anita was spending on an average only about 7 nights per month with Bhiku, and he thought Rs 3,000 for 7 nights were enough. Anita on the other hand was asking for Rs 10,000 per month and a house, to which Bhiku did not agree. This led to some misunderstanding between them.

The story would have perhaps dragged on like that, but meanwhile Anita became pregnant and her demands became more insistent. She threatened to take legal recourse if Bhiku did not take immediate steps to compensate her properly for her favours. This frightened Bhiku, and he contacted his best friend Suresh for advice. The police got the preceding story from Suresh.

God knows what advice Suresh gave to Bhiku, but soon after both Anita and her mother disappeared from the locality quite mysteriously. When the police enquired from Suresh, he told that he had advised Bhiku to pay up immediately as desired by Anita and then break up the relations with her as her demands were getting unreasonable. He advised that if he continued having relations with her, he was likely to land up in trouble. The police however did not believe Suresh. It was widely believed by the police as well as by several residents of the locality that Anita and her mother had been done to death by the goons of Bhiku, and perhaps it was done on the advice of Suresh. However the police had no proof for this belief. Bhiku and Suresh were arrested by the police and produced in the court for alleged murder of Anita and her mother. In the court both Bhiku and Suresh kept insisting that they had nothing to do with the disappearance of Anita and her mother, but the court remanded them to police custody for a period of 15 days. It meant only one thing- that both Bhiku and Suresh would be tortured savagely to get the truth out from them.

When the mummified paw was recovered from Bhiku's farmhouse, the police felt that they had clinched the issue. Bhiku and his goons must have buried the bodies of Anita and her mother somewhere in their farm. Some animal from the neighborhood must have dug up the bodies and have devoured it, and perhaps one hand remained lying in the farm on the surface unnoticed. When the paw was given to me, Bhiku and Suresh had already spent 5 days in police custody, but despite sustained interrogation, they were not coming out with any useful revelation regarding Anita's and her mother's disappearance. Either they really did not know anything about their disappearance or otherwise they were acting very tough. The police was of the latter view.

When the paw was given to me, I was specifically asked to tell the police whether it could be the hand of a female and the approximate age of that female if possible. If the hand turned out to be that of a female around 22 years of age, it would be a very strong point in favour of the police theory that Bhiku and his goons had done Anita and her mother to death and had buried them somewhere in the farmhouse. The police also made a programme to dig up the farm of Bhiku in order to recover the bodies- of course after my report was received.

I made a detailed examination of the paw. It looked pretty much like the hand of an adult human being. On the back of the hand I noticed some hair too. I plucked a few hair and preserved them for later investigations.

Before proceeding any further I decided to take an X-ray of the paw first. The X-ray showed rather a bizarre picture (reproduce fig III-3 on page 41 here). If you look carefully at this picture, you will find that one of the bones is broken. It is the second long bone from the right side. Technically this bone is known as the metacarpal bone. However the anatomical configuration of the bones made me somewhat suspicious. I was not quite sure of my conclusions. But to set my doubts at rest, I removed the soft tissues from the hand and extracted the bones. Then I assembled the bones together.

The adjacent figure (please reproduce figure III-4 on page 42 here) shows the result of my experiment. The hand on the left is the one I assembled and the one on the right is that of a known human hand. One can see that there is a lot of difference between the anatomical configuration of the two hands. It led to only one conclusion- that the recovered paw was not of a human but of some animal! I could not say what animal it was, but one thing was sure. It was not the hand of a human.

I contacted a well known zoology professor for help on this aspect. He studied the bones in detail, and informed me that it was the paw of a bear! I was taken aback by this information.

But to set all doubts at rest, I did some further experimentation on my own. I decided to check the hair I had removed from the paw earlier. All hair - whether they belong to humans or to animals- are covered with some small plate like things called scales. The pattern of scales in a human hair is different from the one found in animals. When I compared the scale pattern of the hairs recovered from the paw with known human hair, there was a lot of difference (reproduce figure III-5 on page 43 here). In the adjacent figure, the hair on the top is the one I recovered from the mummified hand, and the one on the bottom is a hair I recovered from one of my lab assistants. One can see that there is an obvious difference in the scale pattern of the two hair. It was quite obvious now, that the police had recovered the paw of a bear and not of a human.

What had really happened, one may ask. Well, I believe a bear must have died in the jungle in the neighborhood and some animal must have dragged it to the safety of the farmhouse for having a comfortable meal. The paw remained uneaten after the meal and it was abandoned. It got mummified with the passage of time, and it was finally recovered from the farmhouse of Bhiku.

Well, if the paw was not of Anita, what had actually happened to her? Where was she? Subsequent to my findings the police began searching on other lines. A detailed investigation showed that Anita had some distant relations in Bihar. A police party was sent there to find out about her. And to the surprise of every one concerned, Anita was found there alive, hale and hearty. Disillusioned with her life as Bhiku's concubine, she had got an abortion done and moved with her mother to Bihar to start a new life! The police party found Anita and her mother safe and sound at the village in Bihar. Since she had no friends in Madhya Pradesh, she did not find any need to tell anyone she was moving- not even to Bhiku, with whom she was obviously annoyed. After coming to Bihar, she had been making a living as a household help.

Had a detailed forensic examination of the paw not been made, it was quite possible that Bhiku and Suresh would have spent an inordinately long time in the custody of police. When Bhiku and Suresh were released from the police custody, they came and fell on my feet. They thought I had saved them from the agony of a long police custody. The poor fellows did not know that it was forensic science which had actually saved them!

(To protect the identity of the individuals, their names, as well as the various dates of occurrence have been changed)