For May 1999 issue

SCIENCE IN CRIME DETECTION

DEATH BY THROTTLING

-Dr. Anil Aggrawal

This time I am going to tell you about a case, which would have surely gone down as a case of natural death, had a proper forensic examination not been made in this case.

On 7 Dec 1993, the dead body of 56 year old Ramlal was brought to me. He was found dead in his flat on that very morning. He was living alone in that flat for quite sometime. His wife had expired long time back, and his only son had deserted him.

Ramlal had fairly good relations with almost all his neighbors except for one Sohan, who used to have some grudge against him. Nobody knew what exactly the matter was, but probably it was in connection with some business rivalry. Both were engaged in same construction business. Sohan had told several times to Ramlal not to come in his way, but Ramlal often used to divert Sohan customers to him.

When Ramlal’s body was found in his flat, initially everyone thought that it was a case of natural death. To be sure, Ramlal indeed was suffering from some heart problem, and it was very reasonable to believe that he had suffered a heart attack.

But when I examined the eyes of Ramlal I found that it had some blood specks over it. Technically we call them petechial hemorrhages. (Editor: Please reproduce figure 001.jpg here). This immediately made me suspicious and I realized, it could not be a case of natural death as the police was suspecting. To make myself more sure of the death, I opened the eyes of Ramlal, and saw more blood effusion under his eyes. This made me more sure that it was not a case of natural death. You can yourself see, how much blood was there in Ramlal’s eyes. Technical we call them subconjunctival hemorrhages (Editor: Please reproduce figure 002.jpg here).

These types of hemorrhages in the eyes are seen in certain special kinds of deaths which we call asphyxial deaths. Basically in such deaths, the person does not get the amount of oxygen he should get. He dies as a result of want of oxygen.

I suspected that someone had actually strangulated him. When I looked at Ramlal’s neck, I found certain strange looking marks (Editor: Please reproduce figure 003.jpg here). These were clearly nail marks of some person. I asked the accompanying police official how he had failed to see those marks. When I showed those marks to him, he said that he had indeed seen those marks, but had not paid any attention to them, as he thought those were the marks produced by antbites. Indeed at the place where Ramlal’s body was recovered, lots of ants were present, and it was not entirely unnatural for the police official to think that those marks were caused by antbites. It probably needed expert interpretation to say that those were the nail marks.

These nail marks are very typical of homicide by manual strangulation or throttling. In this type of homicide, the person kills his enemy by pressing his neck till the other person is completely unable to respire. However in the struggle that ensues, the nail marks of the assailant often get imprinted on the neck of the victim. These nail marks are crescent shaped, and are very very characteristic. These marks are also sometimes said to the semilunar shaped. The word “Lunar” in Latin means “moon” and “semi” means “half”, so in fact, these marks look like half moon. To be more exact, these look like crescentic moon. Every post mortem expert knows about their shape and how they are caused.

The story was now clear to me. Sohan had entered Ramlal’s house from the backyard and had strangulated Ramlal. In this process he had left some tell tale marks over Ramlal’s neck. I told this story to police who immediately apprehended Sohan.

However Sohan refused to agree to his crime. The police were going to apply third degree methods against him, but I told them not to do so. Instead, I applied a scientific technique to show that Sohan had indeed killed Ramlal. I looked at Sohan’s nails and scraped some dirt from underneath his nails. My idea was that if Sohan had indeed throttled Ramlal, and had caused so many semilunar nail marks over Ramlal’s neck, some of Ramlal’s skin must have got entangled underneath his nails. That had indeed happened.

I examined the material scraped from underneath Sohan’s nails under the microscope. It showed cells, which could have come from Ramlal’s neck. But this microscopic examination could not prove in a court of law that these cells were indeed from Ramlal. Sohan’s lawyer could well have said that these cells were Sohan’s own cells and caused by scratching his own skin.

To prove my theory, I had to conduct a special test – the DNA test. This test can positively say, from which body the cells have come. All persons have different composition and different DNA in their cells. So in theory Ramlal and Sohan should have had different DNA. The lab report said that the cells found from underneath Sohan’s nails were indeed from Ramlal’s neck. This was the final undoing of Sohan, and he admitted he had killed Ramlal. This was indeed a victory for Forensic Medicine.

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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 floppy.)

Dr. Anil Aggrawal, M.D.

Professor of Forensic Medicine

Maulana Azad Medical College

New Delhi‑110002