For April 1999 issue

SCIENCE IN CRIME DETECTION

WHEN BONES SPOKE TO DR. FIMATE

-Dr. Anil Aggrawal

I have just attended the XXth Annual Conference of the Indian Academy of Forensic Medicine, held at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi, from 6th to 8th February 1999. Many forensic scientists (known in common parlance as crime scientists) attended this conference and presented their research work. One of the best papers presented in this conference was by my erstwhile friend from Manipur, Dr. L. Fimate. I will tell you the remarkable work done by Dr. Fimate in non-technical language so everyone could understand his great work.

I was sitting with Dr. Fimate, and he related me the whole story. I was wonderstruck by this story. Still more remarkable was a fact which Dr. Fimate told me about himself. Apparently Dr. Fimate’s reputation as a crime scientist is very high in Manipur, the state where he works. One incident will suffice to tell his reputation. A woman killed her husband by poisoning. The body was duly buried without any suspicion. About 6 months later, suspicion started gathering around that lady, and everyone asked her to confess to her crime. But she refused to confess. She kept asserting that it was a natural death of her husband. Ultimately the police said that they were going to call Dr. Fimate. The body of her husband would be exhumed and Dr. Fimate would do a post-mortem on the body. On hearing this, the woman at once confessed to her crime! She agreed that she indeed had poisoned her husband. That is the amount of reputation that Dr. Fimate has generated amongst the masses. Dr. Fimate is currently on the expert list of several countries, and advises the police of several countries. I would like all of you to read this short real story in the light of these facts.

A bundle of bones was brought to Dr. Fimate some time back. The police wanted Dr. Fimate to tell everything he could about those bones. Obviously the first thing was to tell whether the bones really belonged to a human being. Several times, the bones of an animal look very much like those of a human being, and the layman may think, that a murder has been committed, while in reality the bones belong only to an animal. This is very true if the bones are in a powdered state or broken very badly. In such cases, it becomes difficult even for experts to tell if the bones belonged to a human or an animal. Several other questions were asked from Dr. Fimate regarding the bones. The initial question of whether the bones belonged to an animal or a human was solved very easily by Dr. Fimate. He saw the shape of the bones and from it, he could easily say that the bones belonged to a human being.

Now the police enquired about the missing persons in the area. It was found that two boys were missing from that area, and quite probably the bones belonged to one of them. One boy was 10 year old and was missing since 10 years. The other boy was 8 years old and was missing since 6 years.

Dr. Fimate got down to work immediately, and spread out the bones on his table (Editor: Please reproduce slide 1 here: Caption: Dr. Fimate at work along with his assistant). The following bones were found.

skull

left arm bones

part of right arm bones

ribs

part of hip bones

left lower limb bones

shoulder blades

Now Dr. Fimate set them in anatomical order, i.e. the way in which the bones are normally articulated in the body (Editor: Please reproduce slide 2 here: Caption: Dr. Fimate arranging the bones in order). Dr. Fimate found out the height of the dead person in a very interesting way. There is a special formula which one can apply to the length of the thigh bone, and the formula gives the height of the missing person. (Editor: Please reproduce slide 3 here: Caption: The completely assembled skeleton )It is known as the Karl-Pearson’s formula after the persons who first devised this formula. After applying this formula he could correctly tell the height of the missing person. A remarkable feat!

But Dr. Fimate did not stop at that. Now he examined the skull. (Editor: Please reproduce slide 4 here: Caption: Two linear grooves on the skull discovered by Dr. Fimate). He noticed two linear grooves on the skull. Any other crime scientist would have surely missed them. But it goes to the credit of Dr. Fimate that he discovered them. These were about 3 cm by 0.2 cm in size. Dr. Fimate could at once say that these were the injury marks found on the skull. He also opined that they were caused during life as the grooves showed signs of healing around them. Had they been inflicted by animals after death, there would have been no signs of healing.

Now Dr. Fimate examined the skull closely (Editor: Please reproduce slide 5 here: Caption: A close examination of skull by Dr. Fimate established that it was a female skull). He could say that this was a female skull. This was a remarkable revelation for the police. As we have already seen, the only two persons missing from the area were males, and the police was only thinking in that direction. The moment Dr. Fimate said the bones belonged to a female, the story changed completely. Now the police had to find out about a missing female, not a missing male.

Now Dr. Fimate concentrated on the jaws. This was for a special reason. Often the study of jaws gives away the age of the person. This is because the teeth of an individual erupt at definite ages. In the beginning the temporary teeth erupt. These are known as “milk teeth” in ordinary parlance. The first temporary tooth appears at about 6-8 months of life. And the last temporary tooth appears at about three years of age. There are 20 temporary teeth in all. Thus if a skull shows absolutely no temporary teeth, the skull must belong to a child of less than 6 months of age, and if all 20 temporary teeth are present, the skull must belong to a child greater than three years of age. At about the age of 7 years, the temporary teeth start falling gradually. They get replaced by permanent teeth. The last permanent tooth to appear is the “wisdom tooth”, and it comes by 18 to 25 years. There are a total of 32 permanent teeth. Thus if a skull shows all 32 permanent teeth, the skull must belong to an adult, who is more than 18 years of age. Similarly by applying clever analysis, forensic scientists can tell the age of almost any skull.

Dr. Fimate found that there were 20 temporary teeth in the skull. This meant that the child was above 3 years of age. The problem was to find out the upper age limit of the skull. Dr. Fimate found that the first permanent tooth had not yet erupted (Editor: Please reproduce slide 6 here: Caption: A study of the teeth enabled Dr. Fimate to tell the age of the child completely. This skull belonged to a child of between 3-5 years of age). This meant that the child was less than 5 years of age. Now Dr. Fimate could safely say that the bones belonged to a girl child of between 3-5 years of age.

The next problem was to tell when the child had died. For this Dr. Fimate saw the condition of the bones. The bones were very soft and some soft tissues were still attached to the bones. Generally if the person is dead for a long time, the bones get dried up and the soft tissue attached to it gets completely destroyed. Some portions of bone were wet and reddish too. This enabled Dr. Fimate to say that this girl had died less than 1 year before.

Now see the beauty of Dr. Fimate’s deduction powers. The police were previously looking for two boys aged 10 years and 8 years, who were missing since 10 years and 6 years before. But after Dr. Fimate had a little “chat” with the bones, they suddenly found themselves looking for a girl child of between 3-5 years of age, missing since about 1 year. This child was previously not in the police list at all.

Dr. Fimate went relentlessly ahead to help the police more. He found that three of the child’s teeth had caries and had been filled up by a dentist.

To sum up Dr. Fimate’s findings till now. The police was looking for a girl child of 3-5 years of age, who had dental caries in 3 of her teeth and who had been killed by hitting on the head. Certainly even if the girl herself had been talking to Dr. Fimate, she could not tell more than this. And Dr. Fimate found so much simply from the bones of that child.

Armed with this information, the police flashed the information in the state. On hearing such accurate information, a couple came forward with a photograph of a four and half year old girl child. They also brought a dental record from their dentist, which showed filling up of her three teeth by their dentist. Everything matched perfectly.

The couple was shown the bones. A small piece of cloth was found along with the bones, which was presumably the remains of the clothes, the child had been wearing. This piece of cloth was duly identified by the parents. This child had been missing 8 months before. Thus by Dr. Fimate’s clever deduction powers, the remains of the child were duly returned to her parents, who then cremated the remains with full honors.

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(Dr. Anil Aggrawal is a professor of Forensic Medicine at the Maulana Azad Medical College, New Delhi-110002. His E-mail is dr_anil@hotmail.com and his Website address is:

http://members.tripod.com/~Prof_Anil_Aggrawal/index.html

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(Note to the Editor: All figures in the article have to be taken from the accompanying slides.)

Dr. Anil Aggrawal, M.D.

Professor of Forensic Medicine

Maulana Azad Medical College

New Delhi‑110002