SCIENCE IN CRIME DETECTION-18 USE OF INFRARED PHOTOGRAPHY IN FORENSIC SCIENCE Last year I came across a very interesting case. The case related to a businessman Mr. Valecha. He had about 5 Acres of land in NOIDA, on which he wanted to build a factory relating to paper business. Somehow, some financial problems arose and Mr. Valecha could not build a factory immediately after acquiring that land. The land was lying vacant as a result. As there was nobody to look after the land, and also because Mr. Valecha became very complacent, the land remained unguarded for about 2 years. In between those two years Mr. Valecha kept going to Japan to finalize the details of technology transfer relating to paper factory. So perhaps his not visiting the factory site was somewhat justified too. After about 2 years all the deals were finalized and Mr. Valecha was able to acquire a loan of about Rs. 2 crores from the Govt. Now when he reached the site of factory he found that the place had been occupied by one local goon Mahto. He was running some liquor business from there. When Mr. Valecha asked him to vacate the land, he asked him to get lost. This infuriated Mr. Valecha very much and he contacted the police to help him in this matter. Valecha had good contacts in the police and he was sure he could get the things done. Unfortunately for Valecha, Mahto had good contacts too. Not only did he know higher‑ups in the police, he had contacts with the Underworld dons too and even with some local influential politicians. It was believed that he was paying regularly something to them, and was always actively engaged in the political campaigns of those leaders. Thus having him moved through local police contacts was not likely to be of much consequence, and that was what actually happened. The local SHO did try his level best in the beginning, but very soon when he realized the enormity of the task he had inadvertently taken, he lost all interest in the case. There was no option left for Mr. Valecha than to go to court, but this would have taken several years obviously, and Mr. Valecha could not hold on to his Govt. loan till that time. The loan would lapse only after 2 months, if Mr. Valecha could not use that loan till that time. And Valecha did not want the loan to lapse at any cost. It was under these circumstances that Valecha took a very impetuous decision. Somebody suggested to him that he should strike a deal with Mahto. Perhaps he would take a few lakhs Rupees and vacate the land himself. Valecha liked this idea and approached Mahto. He had imagined that the deal would be finalized in a few lakh Rupees. He was prepared to pay up to Rs.5 lakhs for having that land vacated. However when he talked with Mahto he was dumbstruck when Mahto kept before him a demand of Rs. 50 lakhs. This was beyond the capacity of Valecha. Try hard as he would, he could not bring Mahto to reduce his demand. Repeated discussions with various representatives of Valecha also did not bring any fruitful results. Valecha was quite exasperated now. At this stage somebody suggested to him that there was a local goon MunnaLal who could help him. MunnaLal specialized in murder. He would charge a hefty sum from his client and do away with anyone indicated by his client. When MunnaLal was contacted he agreed to kill Mahto for a sum of Rs. one lakh. As Valecha had no other option, he agreed to this. On May 15, 1993 Valecha gave a phone call to Mahto and told him that he had arranged for Rs. 50 lakhs as desired by him and he could come to Valecha's house any time to collect it. Mahto jumped at the suggestion and replied that he will be there on that very night. The time was fixed for 10 pm. This suited Valecha and MunnaLal, who wanted to do away with Mahto. Valecha had a plush house in Golf Links area. The house was tastefully decorated. MunnaLal reached Valecha's house at 8 pm sharp. He was a hatchet specialist. He had brought his hatchet with him. The plan was to kill Mahto with the hatchet and then to do away with the body. At 10 pm the door bell rang. Valecha opened the door and found Mahto standing in the doorway. Till now everything was going according to plan. Mahto was asked to take a seat. He sat on a modular sofa. This is a modern kind of sofa which can be converted into a bed at night (reproduce fig. 1 on page 191 here). The upholstery on the sofa was of a dark red colour. Mahto took the left side of the sofa. While Valecha engaged Mahto in talks, MunnaLal came from behind and struck hard on Mahto's head. Mahto immediately dropped dead. After this both Valecha and MunnaLal disposed of the body of Mahto by throwing it away in the bushes of the Ridge area. When the body of Mahto was recovered by the police the next day, they started investigation. Their line of investigation led them to Valecha. When one of Valecha's servants was questioned, he told the whole story to the police. He was present in the house when the incident had taken place. When the police started building up the case against Valecha, they were quite dismayed to find that the bed on which Mahto was alleged to be sitting did not show any blood stain. This seemed to refute the story given by the servant. But in fact the stains were not visible because the upholstery of the sofa was of red colour. Here the police was in great dilemma. If they showed the normal pictures of the sofa in the court, it would have been extremely difficult for them to convince the judge that a murder had indeed been committed on that sofa, simply because the sofa did not show any blood stain. It was at this point when they approached me for help. I made use of a special kind of light ray called the infra‑red ray. This type of ray can not be seen by the eye, but it can make several invisible things visible. After taking the photograph in infra‑red ray exposure, the blood stains were clearly visible( reproduce fig. 2 and fig. 3 on page 192 here). One can see a large patch of blood on the left side of the sofa. The close‑up photograph shows many fine areas of blood splashing. The contrast appears dramatic when you compare these two figures with fig.1 which has been taken in normal light. In fig.1, although blood stains are present, they are hardly visible. The police then got encouraged and asked me to take the photographs of MunnaLal's shirt also. MunnaLal was wearing a black shirt at the time of murder, and police had taken that shirt into custody. But that shirt was not showing any signs of blood, and because of that police had got discouraged very much(reproduce fig. 5 on page 194 here). But when the same shirt was photographed in infra‑red rays, it showed blood stains very clearly(reproduce fig.4 on page 193 here). Thus the infra‑red photography helped the police immensely in building up evidence against Valecha and MunnaLal. The honorable court accepted the photographic evidence, and both of them were convicted. This was yet another victory for Forensic Science!

SCIENCE IN CRIME DETECTION-17 DEATHS DUE TO ACCIDENTS Last time in my column I mentioned a death in the bath by electrocution. Readers may tend to believe that it is an uncommon mode of death. This however is not true. After I wrote this article, a celebrity has died in similar circumstances and before I start my present column, I find it pertinent to give the salient features of this death so that the readers are kept up‑to‑date on these matters. On July 8,1994 Miss Magdalena Jaworska, a 33 year old beauty, who had been Miss Poland 1984, died from electric shock when she was taking a bath. She used to keep her electric hair drier in her bathroom and used to dry her hair while lying in the bathtub itself‑admittedly an unusual practice. Presumably when she was drying her hair, the drier fell in the bath and the unfortunate girl got electrocuted. Readers may note that this case is remarkably similar to the one, I mentioned in my last column, where in place of electric drier, an electric heater was found in the bath‑tub. That death also appeared to be an accidental death, but on detailed forensic investigation it was revealed that it was in fact a case of homicide. The death of Jaworska seems very bizarre to me, and who knows......? This time I would like to tell you about a very interesting case which came to me last year. On 16th September,1993 a dead body of a 55 year old male was brought to me. He had died in a car accident. I was told by the police that he had been crushed by the car of a wealthy businessman Mr. Ramlal Verma. On that day he was going in his Maruti car to some place at Vasant Vihar. The time was 11 pm. It was pitch dark. He was a little bit drunk too. Suddenly he found that a person had been crushed under his car. He panicked and tried to speed away from there, but fortunately a police patrol car was passing from there. They sensed something wrong and chased the vehicle. And thus Ramlal Verma was caught. On the face of it, the case appeared to be an open‑and‑shut case. But Ramlal contacted the best of lawyers and they came up with an ingenious suggestion. According to them, the person had fainted on the road due to some weakness. To be sure, Sohan, the person who had died, was a little bit undernourished and he belonged to a low socio‑economic status. It was conceivable that he did have a fainting attack. According to the plea taken by Mr. Verma, his car passed over his body only after he fainted. In other words, Mr. Verma did not hit the deceased while he was walking; he was inadvertently run over by no fault of Mr. Verma. If this hypothesis could be proved, Mr. Verma could definitely walk away with a much lighter sentence than otherwise. The police and the family members of the deceased however maintained that Mr. Verma had run his car over Sohan, because he was doing drunk driving. So ultimately the question boiled down to this: Was Sohan walking while he was hit by the car, or was he lying on the ground already? If the post‑mortem could prove that Sohan was walking while being hit, Verma would get a much more stern sentence than if it turned out that Sohan was lying on the ground at the time of accident. The later situation would prove Verma's contention that Sohan had fainted on the road and he (Verma) had no time to react to save him (Sohan). In the beginning the police was very skeptical, if I could prove such a tricky question. But when I assured them that such a question could indeed be answered by the application of sheer logic, they began feeling much more comfortable. To understand how this can be done, let us understand a little bit about how victims are injured in automobile accidents. When a person is struck by a car, he generally receives injuries on his legs, because these are the lowermost part of one's body and are on the level of car's bumper. In fact in most cases of accidents by car, the pedestrian receives fractures of the legs, which go by the name `Bumper fractures'(reproduce fig. 9.15 on page 266 here). By measuring the height of these fractures from the heels, one can actually measure the height of the bumper of the car. Sometimes the car bumper may only cause abrasions and tears. Their position on the legs may tell the position of the victim while the accidents occurred. For instance if these abrasions and tears are on the front of legs, it is quite obvious that he was facing the vehicle(reproduce fig. 9.16 on page 266 here). If these injuries are on the back of the legs, it denotes that the victim might be hit unawares while he was facing away from the vehicle. The mechanism of most of pedestrian injuries could be understood from the accompanying line diagram(reproduce fig.9.12 on page 263 here).When a victim is hit by a car, he may either be thrown forwards or may be scooped up on the car itself. The part that is first hit by the car are usually legs. Injuries caused by this primary impact of the vehicle are called `primary impact injuries'. After this primary impact, the victim is scooped up on the car. Thus he receives further injuries on the head. These injuries are usually caused by the windscreen of the car. The windscreen may be broken and pieces of glass may be found embedded in the face of the victim. Since these injuries are caused by secondary impact of the car, these injuries are known as `secondary impact injuries'. After the victim receives the secondary impact injuries, he is usually thrown on the ground. Contact with the ground causes a third set of injuries to the victim, which are known as tertiary injuries. If a person is lying on the ground and is run over by the car, these typical injuries would be missing. Instead there would be injuries typical of run‑over accident(reproduce fig.9.17 on page 267 here). These injuries cause severe crushing and `flaying' of the body parts which come under the vehicle. By seeing these typical injuries we can make some idea as to what happened to the victim. When I brought Sohan's body to my post‑mortem table, the first thing I did was to look at Sohan's legs to look for bumper's fracture. Sure enough, there were bumper fractures on the legs. Their position on the body told me that when he was hit by the car he had his back turned towards the car. Thus obviously, Sohan had been taken unawares. I also measured the height of these fractures from the heels and later measured the height of the bumpers of Verma's car. I was amazed to find that the two were almost identical. This clearly proved that Sohan was indeed standing while Verma's car hit him. Had he been lying on the road as alleged by Verma and his lawyers, he could not have received the bumper fractures in any way. Further, when I examined Sohan's face, I found that his face had multiple abrasions and cut marks, as if produced by glass. As the reader can guess now, these were the secondary impact injuries, produced by the windscreen of Verma's car. I looked at Sohan's face carefully with a hand lens, and I was able to locate some tiny pieces of glass embedded in his face. This was the final undoing of Mr. Verma. If Sohan was lying on the ground, how could the glass pieces get embedded in his face? Thus I could prove that when Verma's car hit Sohan, he was standing on the road; perhaps walking in the other direction when Verma in a tipsy condition hit him from behind. The court accepted my arguments and Mr. Verma was convicted. This was a victory of Forensic Science. Finally a word about this series which I am running regularly in this prestigious magazine. I am getting a lot of letters daily in my office regarding these columns. Many readers want to know some additional information regarding a particular case. Some others have additional interesting information to give me. Still others have ingenious suggestions to give me regarding the solution of a particular case. Till now I was corresponding personally with these knowledgeable readers, and satisfying their curiosity at a personal level. A better way to deal with this situation would be to take up some interesting queries out of these and answer them in the column itself, so that more readers can benefit from each other's experiences. The editor of this magazine has kindly agreed to make this column an interactive one, in which a part of the space would be given to the reader's queries and their experiences. Readers are invited to send their queries, suggestions, additional information and other tit‑bits, either to me directly or to the editor, so that these pieces could be taken up in my subsequent columns.

SCIENCE IN CRIME DETECTION-16 MURDER BY ELECTRICITY This time I am going to tell you about a very unusual case of homicide. This case came up while I was in Britain and working with the legendary crime scientist Prof. Bernard Knight. A young woman was found dead in her bath, slumped forwards in a kneeling position with one breast resting against a chrome tap (see Fig. 1)(reproduce the fig on page 303 here). The left arm was trailing over the edge of the bath, in which was the usual level of water plus an electric fan heater immersed near the feet. The heater was connected by a long cable to a 240 volt socket in an adjacent bedroom. To all intents and purposes it appeared that the woman, while taking her bath had accidentally slipped in the bath and drowned. This is not a very unusual mode mode of death. Several people have accidentally died in this way. As regards the heater in the water, it was assumed that when the woman must be struggling to find her way out, her legs may have got entangled in the cable wire somehow and she must have accidentally dragged the heater in the bath. Since Britain is a cold country many people keep heaters in their bathroom while taking bath, so the presence of a heater in the bathroom did not arouse much suspicion. The post mortem examination seemed merely a routine formality. However while we were conducting the post mortem examination I noted two curious marks on the body and showed them to Prof. Knight. The first was on the left breast and the other was over the inside of her left arm near the axilla. These were the marks produced by electricity. Prof. Knight agreed with my suggestion that it was a case of homicide rather than that of accident. Subsequent investigations revealed that it was indeed a case of homicide and the husband was involved in that ghastly murder. So just two insignificant looking marks took the perpetrator of crime to the gallows. To understand about these marks let us understand about some of the basics of electricity first. But before going on further, let me tell you that homicide by electrocution is by no means unknown. In a Hindi film of early 1970s, Gehri Chaal (An Amitabh Bachchan, Jeetendra and Hema Malini starrer), Amitabh Bachchan tries to kill the CBI inspector Jeetendra by cleverly setting up wires in his bathroom in such a way that the moment Jeetendra touches the tap, he get electrocuted. Of course by a quirk of fate he does not die, but gets away by getting simply a strong current ! Coming to the basics of electricity now. One of the important things to understand is the meaning of "current". All of us use this term daily. The word "current" signifies the quantity of electricity flowing through a wire. It is measured in units called "Amperes". We must not get worried about this term. This is a technical term and I am introducing it only for information purposes. The only thing that must be understood here is that a current of, say, 2 amperes is greater than a current of 1 ampere. 1 ampere is in fact a huge amount of current. This much current is not encountered in daily life, so scientists usually talk of a lesser quantity known as milliamperes. One ampere is equal to 1000 milliamperes. To get some idea of how much a milliampere is, one must know that in an ordinary household electric bulb of 100 watts running on 250 volts, a current of about 400 mA(milliamperes) flows. When a current is flowing through a wire, what is actually flowing through the wire are tiny ball like structures known as electrons. These balls are too tiny to be seen with the naked eye or even with the strongest microscopes. More the number of electrons flowing through the wire, stronger the current. How tiny these electrons are, can be estimated from the fact that 6. 25 quadrillion electrons (this number can be written by writing 625 and then adding 13 zeros after it!)must pass through a wire or through the body every second to set up a current of just 1 milliampere. Most people can voluntarily tolerate a current of up to 30 mA applied to the hand, which results in painful muscle contractions. When the amount of current is increased to 40mA, consciousness is lost. At 50mA the heart loses its rythm and starts beating very fast‑even upto 600 times a minute(the normal rate is only 72 per minute). This phenomenon is known as ventricular fibrillation . Death occurs when the current is increased to 80mA. The time for which the current passes through the body is also important. If a small amount of current passes through the body for a longer period, the net damage to the body may be more than when a large current passes through the body for a much smaller period. Thus it is wrong to believe that a large current is necessarily fatal. One can escape the ill‑effects of a large current if the exposure to the current is for a very small period. Another thing to understand is the significance of "voltage". Voltage is like the "pressure" of electricity. This pressure is measured in units called volts. Just as more water pressure causes more water to come in our water taps, more electrical pressure( i. e. greater voltage) causes more electricity to flow through the wire. If this same voltage is applied to the body, electricity starts passing through the body causing harmful effects. The domestic supply in India is 240 volts, which is quite fatal. That is why in several parts of USA and Europe, the domestic electricity is supplied at only 110 volts. The commonly used car battery supplies a voltage of only 24 volts, which is quite safe, but as we have already seen, even this voltage may prove fatal if the voltage is applied to the body for much longer periods. In fact cases of death have occured when a person was pinned beneath an electrical vehicle for several hours. It is interesting to note that an ordinary torch cell supplies only about 1. 5 volts. Thus if about 160 such cells were joined end‑to‑end, they would supply an electric voltage of 160x0. 5 volts or about 240 volts. Thus such a combination could cleverly be used by a cunning criminal to commit murder! When a person receives an electrical current, what actually happens is that an electrical current passes through his body. It enters the body through a particular point, known as the entry point and exits the body through another point, known as the exit point. What is important to understand is that the current leaves characteristic burn marks, both at the entry and the exit points. These are known as `electrical marks' or `electrical burns' or `Joule burns'(reproduce the figure on page 297 and page 298 here). The term `Joule burns' comes from the name of an English scientist James Prescott Joule (1818‑1889), who was the first scientist to work out the formula governing the development of heat by an electric current. According to this formula if the current flowing through the body is doubled, the heat generated is not just doubled, but is increased 4 times!Similarly if the current is increased three‑fold, the heat increases 9 times. In other words, the heat increases as the square of the applied current. This is indeed a dangerous situation. The temperature of the skin under the live wire may reach as high as 95 o C. Such a high temperature splits the layers of the skin and produces a raised blister. When the current ceases, the blister cools and collapses,giving rise to a characteristic mark which we have already talked about. A characteristic feature of this mark is that the edges of this mark are quite blanched (reproduce fig 12. 6 on page 300 here) This mark immediately tells the crime scientist that the deceased may have been electrocuted. This is the mark that I saw on the body of the woman and which I showed to my colleague. To get back to our case now. After my suggestion, the police called the expert electricians and asked them to examine the concerned heater. Surprisingly it was found that the third `earth' wire was disconnected from the earth pin inside the plug. This clearly established the intentions of the murderer who incidentally turned out to be the woman's husband himself. Since the enamel lining of the bath can not allow the current to pass through, the earthing of the current could only occur through the bath water via the chrome waste pipe. The woman was subsequently pushed against the tap by her husband in such a way that her left breast touched the metal tap. This started another path for the current to pass out‑through the body and then through the metal tap. This path presumably took the woman's life. The husband was subsequently questioned by the police regarding this. Initially he kept denying everything, but when he was presented with the forensic evidence, he broke down and confessed to everything. This was a remarkable victory for forensic science. This case also illustrates, how fertile human mind can be, especially when it comes to crime.

SCIENCE IN CRIME DETECTION-15 SPEECH SPECTOGRAMS CATCH CRIMINALS This time I tell you about an exciting new technique, by which we can recognize a person from his speech. This technique is useful in cases like abduction, when kidnapper asks for ransom over the telephone. Can a person be positively recognized from his voice? You must have noticed that you can readily recognize a person from his voice. Even when you are sitting engrossed in your work and someone calls you from the back, you can readily recognize his voice. This is because, the voice‑generating system in each individual is different. In fig(1) you can see the various structures of the mouth which are involved in speech production such as palate, tongue, teeth, lips, cheeks, nasal aperture etc. These structures are different in different individuals and this is the basis of speech recognition. For a long time scientists were thinking of having a kind of "photographs" of human speech. It is always easier and simpler to compare two photographs, than to compare two sounds. Moreover, if a person has not heard the voice of a culprit for a long time, and he was asked to recognize that culprit again by his voice after a period of, say ten years, he might be at a loss to recognize him. If there was no way of converting the sound to a photograph, a police officer would face this problem very often. To overcome this handicap, in 1963, as scientist Lawrence G.Kersta, developed a unique machine in his laboratory in Somerville, New Jersey. This machine is known as the speech spectrograph and is shown Fig(2). The speech spectrograph converts a human speech into various graphs which can be easily compared. Fig 3, shows the spectrograms (the voice graphs) of male and female voice. Once can easily spot the difference between the two. Fig 4, shows the spectrograms or voice prints of 5 people saying a single word"you". there are 6 spectrograms which show clearly that one person has said" you" two times. Try to visualize the photograph carefully and try to find out which two voice prints look similar. These are the words uttered by the same person. With this background in mind, it is now easier to explain, how the machine helps in police investigation. Suppose a kidnapper has kidnapped a child, and then asks for ransom over the phone. The police scientist can record his voce and make speech spectrograms from that recorded voice, by the help of the spectrograph. The voice prints are then stored in the police prints are then stored in the police records for future reference. In future whenever a suspect is arrested, his voice prints can be made again and matched with that of the telephone caller. If the voice prints match perfectly, then the suspect is indeed the real kidnapper, otherwise not. The same technique can he used in several other situations. Sometimes people phone young females just for fun sake and speak obscene languages over the phone. These are basically harmless people, but their repeated malicious calls may be a nuisance. Till now the only way to tackle with such malicious callers was to keep the phone off the hook or to keep the receiver off the cradle. But now the affected party can call the police and ask them to make voice prints of such callers. These voice prints are permanent records in the files of the police and can be used anytime later when a suspect is arrested. Several countries are using this new technique now regularly to investigate crime.. Michigan State Police for example have been using this method with success since 1968. Some very famous crimes have been solved by this technique. This account should give you an idea of how deeply modern science has affected crime investigation. This is a new field of crime investigation. This is a new field of crime investigation and more research is needed before we can say the final word on it.

SCIENCE IN CRIME DETECTION-14 CONTUSIONS - THE VITAL EVIDENCE A remarkable case came to me in the summer of 1992. Bali Ram, a nine‑year‑old stepchild of Hari Ram and Bhairon Devi had fallen down the stairs and had fallen down the stairs and had died. Actually, when he fell down the stairs, there was a big hue and cry in the neighborhood. Some neighbors came to the spot immediately and brought the child to LNJP casualty. The child was declared dead on arrival and sent to me for post mortem examination. A few facts about the family may be said her, before we go on further. HariRam had lost his first wife Kasturi about 5 years back. She had died of tuberculosis. Bali Ram was Kasturi's son. After Kasturi's death, Hari Ram became a recluse for almost two years, but gradually the shock of his wife's death faded and Hari Ram married for the second time. From the beginning, it was apparent that Bhairon Devi, the new bride hated Bali Ram intensely. In the beginning, she would merely ignore him but gradually she started handing him more severe punishment. She would often beat him and deny him food. I got this history from the neighbor. The moment I got this history, I became very cautious and decided to look for clues that might give me the correct story. The boy had died from head injury which he had sustained during the fall from stairs. There were several fractures on his skull, and the brain inside showed blood clots. This was ample proof that he had indeed fallen down the stairs. However, the clues that could give me some 'behind‑the scene' story still eluded me. Finally I turned over the body and looked for injuries more closely. There were several contusions on the back. these are also known as bruises. In common parlance, in Hindi, we know these as " Neel ". These are commonly caused by blunt force application. I had looked at these contusions before starting the post‑mortem, but at that time I thought that they were produced by fall from stairs. Contusions can indeed be produced by a fall from the stairs. However, when I looked at them closely, I found them to have some pattern. These contusions are known as patterned contusions and are quite helpful in the forensic work. They tell us the shape of the object which was used to hit the deceased. If the hitting object was a lathi or an iron rod, the contusions would be linear in shape. If a hockey stick was used to beat the deceased, the contusions would take the shape of hockey stick and so on. Look at the figure A and you would realize that the contusions indeed have a pattern. I tried to decipher what the object could be, but the exact object eluded me. Then suddenly, like a flash of lightning, the object came to my mind. It had to be a coat‑hanger. The contusions looked exactly like that. I told this fact to the police officer Tejpal. I thought that Bali Ram was first mercilessly beaten by Bhairon Devi and then pushed down from the stairs. If this point of view could be proved, it would change the whole scenario from an accident to murder! The case was beginning to take a serious turn. Bhairon Devi was summoned by Tejpal, the investigating officer, and questioned. She reaffirmed that Bali Ram had indeed fallen down the stairs and she hadn't beaten him. She asserted that she loved Bali Ram like her own child. How ever her neighbors refused to confirm her assertion that she loved Bali Ram like her own child. They asserted that she often beat Bali Ram. Finally Tejpal decided to search her house. The specific thing he was looking for, was the hanger with which Baliram was supposed to have been beaten. Finally he indeed found the hanger and brought it to me. When I matched the shape of the hanger with that of the contusions, the shapes corresponded completely. (See figure B). This testified that the boy was indeed beaten. This evidence broke Bhairon Devi and she confessed the whole crime. She was duly prosecuted by the court on my evidence and sentenced to life imprisonment. This case amply illustrates, how a seemingly trivial clue can turn a case entirely.

SCIENCE IN CRIME DETECTION-13 HOW DO WE RECOGNIZE A PERSON FROM HIS SKULL ? This time I am going to tell you about a remarkable technique by which we can positively identify a person from his skull. On May 23, 1992 the police found a skull floating in a local river and I was called to opine upon it. I was to give the police all possible information from that skull. But the most important question was, who was that person? From the villages Rampur and Phoolpur which were lying on either side of the river, at least seven persons were reported missing during the last one year under mysterious circumstances. Of these 4 were females and 3 were males. It was quite possible that the skull belonged to one of these seven persons. When I examined the skull closely, I found that the skull belonged to a female. Telling the sex of a person from the skull is not difficult and we have already talked at length about it in our Feb.1994 issue (pp.21‑23). So obviously the 3 males were out of our contention and our task was reduced somewhat. The four females were 15‑year old Sona, 32 year old married Ramwati, 47‑year‑old Phulwanti and 83 year‑old widow Kashi. The police had much to gain if I could tell them whose skull was it, because they could then concentrate their investigations only on that female and her possible enemies. In effect, their task would be reduced to one‑fourth, if I could tell them this vital question. I would like to digress here somewhat and say something about the anatomy of the skull. The skull of every person is unique. It has got distinct bumps, projections and curvatures. If you touch your eyebrows you will find that the skull underneath is somewhat raised. Similarly if you touch your check prominences you will find that the cheek bones beneath are somewhat raised. But what is most important to comprehend is that these 'bumps' are different in each individual. Similarly the skull shows many curvatures. The curvature of the top your skull in unique. All persons have different curvatures of their skull. Similarly the curvature of the chin is different in each individual. In the same way, the shape of the teeth is different in each individual. If we see the margins of the teeth in a particular individual, the margin forms a distinct outline in each individual. So if you see the photographs of a smiling individual, you would find that the upper teeth, which are usually visible in smiling individual, form a distinct outline. The face is molded over the skull, much like plaster of Paris molded over an underlying mould. This cause the face to reflect the same bumps, curves and projection as are present in the individual's skull. Now if we have a photograph of the individual, we have got a record of all the peculiarities of that person skull. If has been now possible to take the photograph of a missing person and superimpose it over the negative of the skull so that all bumps, curvatures and projections could be compared. Teeth outline of smiling individual can also be compared to the teeth outline of the skull. If all the outlines match perfectly with each other, then we can be hundred percent sure that the skull belonged to that individual only. I asked for the photographs of all 4 missing females ‑ Sona, Ramvati, Phulwanti and Kashi. I enlarged the photographs to life‑size and then superimposed the negative of the skull over the various photographs. You can see some examples of these superimpositions in the accompanying photographs although they are from different cases. This will give you some idea of what superimposition in all about. Only the facial outline of Sona matched the outline of the skull and I could tell the of the skull and I could tell the Police that it was the skull of Sona. Police was in fact suspecting for sometime that 15‑year‑old Sona had been murdered by her paramour Ramesh. However they could not lay their hands on Ramesh as Ramesh was the son of a powerful Zamindar. In addition, they did not have any solid proof that Sona had even been murdered. Ramesh kept asserting that Sona had run away with one of her lovers. But now, after my opinion, the police had solid proof that Sona had indeed been murdered. Armed with this information, they raided the house of Ramesh and apprehended him. Ramesh again tried to repeat the same old story, but now the police knew better. When they told him, how they had found about the identity of the skull, Ramesh broke down and told them the whole story. Ramesh had enticed Sona with his money and had promised to get married to her. Under this presumption, Sona allowed Ramesh to have sex with her. After some weeks Sona fell pregnant and began pressing Ramesh to marry her. Ramesh never wanted to marry her. He began to think of ways to dispose her off somehow. Finally one day he called her at the bank of the river to finalize the matter. There he strangulated her and threw her dead body into the river, thinking that the body will drown. Actually the fishes, and other aquatic animals of the river ate the flesh of Sona's body till only the skeleton remained. From this skeleton, the skull got separated and landed ashore. That is how the police got hold of that skull. This case is one of my best cases as I solved a murder mystery by utilizing one of the latest techniques in crime investigation.

Science in Crime Detection Click on the topic to access. When did the murder take place ? Who handled the gun ? Did the communists kill the czar ? IMPORTANT NOTE: THIS MATERIAL IS COPYRIGHTED BY THE AUTHOR AND MAY NOT BE REPOSTED, REPRINTED OR OTHERWISE USED IN ANY MANNER WITHOUT THE WRITTEN PERMISSION OF THE AUTHOR.

SCIENCE IN CRIME DETECTION-11 WHAT DO THE BONES TELL US ? Two years back, I was called to a village near Alwar to solve a very bizarre case. While some digging was going on for a construction purpose, a laborer unearthed several bones. He immediately ran to his contractor and showed him the bones. The contractor contacted the police and the police in turn contacted me. That is how I came into the picture. While I was going through the police records of the area, I realized that about 2 years back a 22‑year‑old boy was reported missing from that village. His name was Suresh. There was a widely held rumor that Suresh had run away from his house in search of a proper job. It was common view that he was quite dissatisfied with his parents and wanted to live away in an independent manner. So, when, one day Suresh was not found in his home, everyone in the village assumed that he had run away from home. Suresh's parents however were not ready to admit that he had run away. They constantly maintained that he had fallen in the hands of some criminal who had killed him and had buried him somewhere. The real story was deeper than this. Actually, before Suresh's disappearance, nobody could even think about it. Suresh was in love with a local belle Geeta. She was the daughter of a rich money‑lender of the village, Karan Singh. Karan Singh had repeatedly warned Suresh not to meet Geeta but, since his own daughter was secretly in love with Suresh, he couldn't stop their meetings. Once he had openly sworn to kill them both, if they met again. About a month after Suresh's disappearance, Geeta was found missing from her house too. The story took a new turn now. Was Geeta secretly kidnapped by Suresh? Were Suresh and Geeta separately kidnapped and murdered by Karan Singh's goons? Or, was their disappearance totally unrelated to each other? Nobody knew what indeed had happened. To be sure, Geeta was extremely beautiful and she could very well have fallen in the hands of a rapist and murderer. But, how to know what had really happened. Nobody even was sure that Suresh and Geeta had been killed. When I examined the bones preliminary, I found two skulls among the bones, so it was sure that I was dealing with a least two dead people. But, I had to prove that out of them one skull was a male and the other, a female. Only then, could we prove that Karan Singh had indeed got Suresh and Geeta murdered. Not only that I had to prove that out of other bones too, half belonged to a male and half to a female. This was challenging task, but I decided to undertake it. How do we find out sex of the victim from the bones? Many times I have been asked this question by the police officers and public. In this case, I am going to provide you with my well kept secrets. Many sexual differences are found in the skull. Look at fig.1, carefully, which shows two skulls‑ one of a male and the other a female one. The upper one is male skull, while the lower one is a female. There are several ways in which we can say that a given skull is male or a female. One is to look at the bone just beneath the eyebrows. This is technically known as SUPRA ORBITAL RIDGE . It is much more prominent in a male skull than in a female skull (shown in the figure by arrows). Further when you see the angulation between the forehead and the nose, you find that in a male skull, this angulation is very prominent. The bone behind the ear is known as MASTOID PROCESS . This is larger, round and blunt in a male skull and smaller, smoother and pointed in a female skull. This point is also shown in the figure by arrows. There are several other differences in the skulls, but these three are very prominent in the given diagram and I generally infer the sex from these 3 points. Let us now come to the jaw technically known as MANDIBLE. The jaw bone above is of male, while the jaw bone below is of female. The jaw bone is squarer in the males while it is much more rounded in the females Fig 2. Hip bone shows the maximum differences between the two sexes. There are two hip bones in each individual. If you stand with your arms akimbo, your palms are over the hip bones. These hip bones unite with the back bone(SACRUM) and from a circular jug like structure known technically as PELVIS. Nature has made pelvis much wider in women because , women have to bear children. The babies, while they are within the bomb, remain enclosed by pelvis. If nature had made pelvis narrower in females, babies would find it very difficult to come out of womb at the time of delivery. It is the wide pelvis, which gives the females their characteristic waddling gait. We make use of this fact in determining, whether a given hip bone is of a male or of a female. Look at Fig.3, it shows 2 hip bones. The upper one is a male hip bone, while the lower one is a female. The angulation of the bone is more in male as shown in the diagram. There is a notch in the hip bone which is known as GREATER SCIATIC NOTCH . This notch is shown in Fig 4. This notch is more acute in the male and much wider in the female(as shown). The backbone or sacrum is shown in Fig 5. Sacrum is narrower in the male. You can guess that the sacrum on the left is a male one. Feeling like a detective already? Well, let's go on. There are differences in arm bones and thigh bones. The rounded projection, which you are seeing fits into the shoulder. This rounded projection is noticeably larger in the male. Yes, you are right; the bone on the left is a male one. Finally look at fig 7, it shows the thigh bones. The lower position fits into the knee joint. If we stand, the thigh bone erect on the table, then the male thigh bone known technically as FEMUR , makes a greater angulation than the female thigh bone. In the given figure, the bone on the left shows an angle of 80 0 and the bone on the right shows an angle of 76 0 , so obviously the left bone belongs to a male. Using these criteria, I could prove that there were in fact two sets of bones‑ one belonging to a male and the other to female. Armed with this knowledge, police raided the house of Karan Singh and took him into custody for interrogation, In the beginning he denied of knowing anything, but later broke under pressure. He admitted to having killed both of them when he realized that Geeta had becomes pregnant. The court gave him rigorous imprisonment for life. By reading this account you must yourself be feeling like a detective already. If you like, you may preserve these issues of 'Crime & Detective'. Who knows, one day you might turn out to be a great detective and help the police.

SCIENCE IN CRIME DETECTION-12 EXAMINING THE SCENE OF CRIME Many people have asked me, what do we do at the scene of crime. In this column, I hope to explain a little bit about what we do at the scene of crime. Many times when a murder is reported in an outfield, the police officers prefer to take us to the scene where the dead body is lying. The idea is to give first hand information to the police regarding the murder. There are many vital pieces of evidence which can get lost once the body is moved. Consider the case of a man who has been shot down by a bullet and is lying on the field. Only a forensic pathologist can say by examining the dead body, as to which is the entrance wound and which one the exit wound. To a lay person, or a police officer, both the wounds of entrance and exit would appear the same. If forensic pathologist examines these wounds, he can reconstruct the line of fire, by joining these two points and say which direction the bullet came from. Once the body is moved, it would become impossible to reconstruct this 'line of fire' which can prove vital in later police investigations. Sometimes, when a dead body is moved from the actual place of murder to the mortuary, it might have to be dragged, dropped and dumped at various places in between. This produces artificial abrasions after death. These are technically known as 'post‑mortem abrasions' or simply as 'P.M. abrasions'. A doctor may wrongly think that these abrasions were produced during life and this may confuse the whole issue. So it is better to examine the body at the scent of crime itself. If you refer to diagram 1, you can have some idea about how we examine the body at the scene of crime. This persons was killed in a shoot‑out incident and it was very important to know which direction the bullets came from (Fig.1A). You can see from the figure, the body is lying in the open, and an overcoat is lying spread‑out along with him. In such case, first thing we do is to photograph the body. The body has now to be removed. Before removing the body, we insert pegs around it and any material lying beside it, such as overcoat in this case(Fig.1B). the body and accompanying materials are then removed. However, before removal of the body, we note all the injuries on the body and determine how they were caused. This includes the determination of entry and exit wounds caused by firearms. Now a strong string is passed round the pegs (Fig.1C). This gives an idea of the position of the body. The body is now removed to the mortuary and injuries are marked in great detail. First of all, the body is examined with the clothings on (Fig.1D). Any injuries on clothings are marked by circles. Now the clothings are removed and the injuries on the body are noted (Fig.1E). The injuries on clothings and on the body must be co‑related. Finally we may return to the scent of crime and check once gain the position of the body. Since, now we have an idea of the entry and exit holes on the body, we can tell the police, which direction the bullets came from. Many times interesting clues can be recovered from the scene of crime, such as cigarette butts, hair, fibre fragments, blood stains, empty cartridges and so on. These clues also help us in several ways. But the main thing to be stressed here is to have a look at the body in a detailed manner and record its position most accurately. That single thing can work wonders for us several times.

SCIENCE IN CRIME DETECTION-9 TESTING FOR HOMOSEXUALITY Two years back, I was involved in a most bizarre case. A young boy of eight, Kalu was once coming home from school. The time was around 2.00 p.m. Two sturdy looking persons came to him and lured him away with a chocolate. They took him to his house and tried to have intercourse with him tried to have intercourse with him through anus. When the boy protested, they offered him a ten‑rupee not for this "little job". He was told that he would not be hurt. Kalu was a poor boy and a sum of Rs.10/‑ was big amount for him. He could purchase many toys with that amount, which he had always wanted to. Although he did not like the idea of someone introducing his 'organ' in to his anus, yet the lure of the money let him allow that. During the act, however, he suffered from great pain and even bled slightly. His gait became painful and wobbling after that. When his parents asked him why he was walking in a peculiar way, he replied cautiously that he had fallen down and hurt himself. The parents paid no further attention to him. However things did not stop there. The next week, the two youths met Kalu and suggested the same bargain. The boy hesitated a little, but then decided that he could do with another ten rupee note! From then on, this became quite regular. Those two youths would regularly have anal intercourse with Kalu‑almost twice every week‑and would each time give him ten rupees. The affair went on for quite a number of weeks. Then trouble started when the boy developed some ulcers around his anus. These ulcers were discharging pus. His parents thought that the boy had caught some infection and so brought him to me. When I examined him I found that he was suffering from syphilis‑a venereal disease. Such a young boy could catch syphilis in only one way‑through anal intercourse. I explained the situation to his parents and at the same time informed the police also, because it had become a medico‑legal case. Kalu's parents lost their temper and started beating Kalu. Kalu then revealed that Jagga and Kaka, two youths of his area had been using him in this way. Before we go on with our story further, a few words about homosexuality or 'coitus through anus' would be in order. Intercourse through anus is known as sodomy or buggery. An adult male can perform anal intercourse on an adult male, adult female or on a young child(of either sex), as in Kalu's case. When homosexuality is done on an adult male, the practice is known as homosexual sodomy. When a male commits anal intercourse on a female, it is known as heterosexual sodomy. When a child is used, the practice is known as paederasty. This child is usually known as a catamite. The person who performs the act is known as the active agent and the one on whom the act is performed is known as the passive agent. Sometimes two adult males act as active and passive agents alternately. More commonly however, a passive agent always remains a passive agent. n our country, many people regularly earn their livelihood by acting as passive agents and charging a fat fee from their customers. These are known as male prostitutes. Several hijrahs whom are all familiar with, mostly act a passive agents,. Several boys like Kalu agree to become passive agents for the sake of money only. In our country, anal intercourse is a crime. According to section 377 of I.P.C., if it can be proved in anal intercourse, he can be sent to jail for 10 years. So Jagga and Kaka had every reason to deny their involvement in anal intercourse with Kalu. It was not merely a matter of shame, but a criminal act. As we shall see later, they did deny their involvement and it remained for me to prove conclusively that they had indeed used Kalu as a passive agent. An interesting thing is that if a passive agent consents for anal intercourse, even then the he can be incriminated under Section 377 of I.P.C. In our case, Kalu had consented for the act, but since he was only eight years old, his consent was not valid and he could not be incriminated. According to our law, any child under 16 years of age can not understand the nature of such acts and thus his consent for such act is not legal. Another interesting thing is that if a person performs anal intercourse on his own wife, even then he is a culprit under section 377 I.P.C. If his wife consents for such an act, then even she is a culprit and both can be sent to jail for 10 years. A wife can refuse her husband who demands anal intercourse from her. Interestingly she can not legally refuse normal vaginal intercourse to her husband even if she is not in "mood", but she can and must refuse anal intercourse, because if she does not refuse anal intercourse, she also becomes a culprit. If a wife refuses normal vaginal intercourse with her husband and her husband forcibly commits such an intercourse with her, she can not bring him before thee law, but the same is not true of anal intercourse. Not only can she send him to jail for 10 years (if she wants to), but is also entitled to divorce him In fact if a male commits anal intercourse on any man, child or woman, the wife is entitled to divorce him. So much regarding some of the legal points regarding homosexuality. When Jagga and Kaka were interrogated by the police regarding their criminals act, they denied any such involvement. So the burden of proving their involvement fell on me. Whenever a passive agent is brought to us, we examine mainly his anus which tells us several tell tale signs. The person is examined in a knee‑elbow position(Fig.1). In this position the person rests on his knees and elbows. This position is chosen because it exposes the anus in a most prominent way. I first 'inserted a cotton swab (just like Johnson's buds; but with longer handle) into Kalu's anus. The idea was that if any seminal fluid was present in the anal canal, it would be absorbed by the cotton. It could then be tested for the presence of seminal fluid. the presence of seminal fluid in the anal canal confirms that buggery has been done on the passive agent. One of the most common preliminary tests to confirm semen is the Florence test. In this test, we prepare an extract of the suspected, seminal fluid from the anus and mix it with the Florence reagent. If the suspected fluid is semen, then dark brown needle‑shaped crystals are formed (see figure 3) Formation of these crystals confirms the presence of semen. We also try to look at the extract under the microscope. The presence of small tadpole‑like sperm cells confirms the presence of semen. We also see the underwear of the active and passive agents under a special light, the ultraviolet light. If seminal stains are present on the underwear, they begin to glow brightly. The examination of anus also tells several things. Figure 2 shows three main findings in and around the anus. For the purpose of clarify, anal opening is shown slightly enlarged. An important is tearing of the skin around the anus. this is known as fissure. these fissures appear because of the introduction of large‑sized male organ in relatively narrow anal canal. Second important thing is the laxity of the anal sphincter. Anal sphincter is a circular muscle which acts much like a highly elastic rubber band (Figure 3). It actually checks the faecal matter from coming out involuntarily. But when male organ is repeatedly introduced in the anal canal, as during buggery, this sphincter becomes lax and the anus starts gaping. The third important sign is the smoothness of the covering of the anal canal. If we dilate the anus of a normal person and look inside, we find that the covering inside is much like an orange peel, i.e., rugged and rough. But repeated acts of penis insertion smoothers out the ruggedness of the covering. These three signs were quite suggestive that the boy was being used as a catamite. Interestingly, when I subjected the swab taken from Kaka's rectum to Florence test, it came positive for seminal fluid. His anus also showed all the three classical signs. The lawyers of Jagga and Kaka could not refute this hardcore medical evidence in the court. The court admitted my evidence and sentenced both of them to ten years of rigorous imprisonment.

SCIENCE IN CRIME DETECTION-10 ask sir for review ending part WHAT DO THE FINGERPRINTS TELL US ? Sometimes seemingly trivial clues can be very helpful in detecting crime. A fascinating case came my way about 3 years back, which I solved with practically no clues‑ well, almost. I only had a very trivial clue which no person would have even imagined to be helpful in the least. But let me begin my story from the beginning. On the morning of August 19, 1990, the body of Sunita Babbar was found in her flat in Ghaziabad. Somebody had killed her hitting her head with a heavy rod. She was married two years back and had a one year old son. Her husband Rajesh Babbar a clerk in a local private office was getting Rs. 3000/‑ per month. they were living in a joint family‑the whole family occupying a common ancestral house. The night before the killing, all members of the joint family except Rajesh, Sunita and their little son were out. They had gone to the shrine of Vaishno Devi for pilgrimage. Since a few months, tension was brewing up in the house regarding the meagre dowry Sunita had brought. Sunita's mother-in-law Tejwanti wanted that Sunita's father should have giving them a colour TV, so that the whole family could enjoy with it. However, Sunita's father could not fulfil this demand despite his best efforts. This had led to some tension in the house. Sunita's mother‑in‑law Tejwanti and sister‑in‑law Lali sometimes used to misbehave with her. Sunita's husband Rajesh used to keep quite and steered himself out of this tension. Sunita was quite tensed up with the behavior of her in‑laws. She had even written a couple of letters to her parents about this. In the evening of August 18, Sunita and her husband Rajesh were watching their black and white TV in the drawing room, while their son Raju was sleeping in the other room. At about 9.30 pm. Rajesh's friend Ashok Talwar came and invited him to his house for drinks, as he had recently got the promotion. Rajesh jumped at this offer and immediately got ready to accompany him. When Rajesh went to his bedroom to get ready, Ashok sat near Sunita and began staring at her with lustful eyes. Sunita never appreciated his such habits. Once he had tried to make an obscene pass at her and she had even complained about this to her husband, but Rajesh had laughed the matter off. Sunita had a hunch that Ashok secretly wanted to have sex with her. She had once mentioned this fact in her diary too. When Rajesh came back from his bedroom after getting ready, Sunita requested him not to go away leaving her and her son alone in the house. Rajesh did not want to miss the offer of a free drink. He assured Sunita that he will be back around 11 pm. Sunita knew he has giving a false assurance to her, but there was no option for her. Reluctantly she closed the door behind her. Then she went into her room and having nothing better to do, started writing her diary. She was in the practice of writing her diary since last ten years. This diary ultimately fell into the hands of the police from where the police came to know of many facts about her. Ashok Talwar's earlier lustful behavior and his behavior and intention on the night of August 18, was also mentioned in the diary. Apparently Sunita waited for Rajesh upto 12 at midnight and then slept. Rajesh hadn't come by that time. The police apprehended Rajesh from the house of Ashok Talwar. Rajesh told the police that on the night of August 18, when he had gone to Ashok Talwar's house, Talwar had offered him drink after drink till he blanked out at Talwar's residence itself. Ashok Talwar was a shady character. He couldn't answer police queries very well as to what had prompted him to take away Rajesh to his house on that fateful night, when he knew very well that Sunita would be alone. He persisted in saying that he wanted to give Rajesh a treat on his promotion. On enquiry the police found that Talwar had indeed got a promotion about 3 months back. The question was why he gave a treat to Rajesh after such a long period? Apparently there was no sense in giving a party after such a long gap. To the police Talwar could not give any reasonable answer to this question. Another remarkable fact was that no other person had been invited for that party. In fact it could hardly be called a party. For all intents and purposes, it appeared that Talwar wanted to have Sunita alone on that night. Police inspector Chauhan developed a very weird but convincing theory from his investigations. According to him, Talwar was having a lustful eye on Sunita for a long time, but he was not getting a proper chance. When on August 18, Rajesh's family left for Vaishno Devi, Talwar noticed the opportunity. If he could somehow draw Rajesh away from his house, Sunita would be alone and he would be able to quench his lust. So he came to Rajesh's house at 9.30 pm. and took him away on a very flimsy ground. At his residence, Talwar, completely boozed Rajesh till he lost his consciousness. In the midnight around 12 pm. he came to Sunita's house and rang the bell. Sunita opened the door thinking Rajesh had returned. Thus Talwar gained entry to Sunita's house easily. There he raped her and either killed her afterwards intentionally or she died without his intention to kill her, during the course of rape itself. Frequently during the acts of rape, the rapist tries to stifle the cries of the victim by pushing a pillow against her face. Quite possibly, after Talwar was through with Sunita, he found to his horror that he had inadvertently killed Sunita and then he bolted away, came back to his house and slept. The theory seemed very plausible and all the known facts seemed to fit in perfectly well in this story. It was at this stage, that I was called by the police inspector Chauhan to inspect Sunita's body and the scene of crime. Post‑mortem examination revealed that Sunita had died because of a head injury. Somebody had hit her head with a heavy rod. There were no signs of suffocation. This was a major blow to Chauhan's hypothesis. Yet he insisted that he was right. He had an intuition that Talwar was the killer. He now said that Talwar must have raped Sunita first and then deliberately killed her. This was also a plausible alternative. All in all we couldn't find much to disprove Chauhan's hypothesis. An examination of Sunita's genitals revealed that she was used to sexual intercourse and one act of sexual intercourse had been performed on her shortly before her death. I could not say much about the timing of the act. It could be just before her death or as long as 10‑12 hours before her death. I fixed her time of death (see 'Crime & Detective' February 1993 , page 90) as 2 am on August 19. This meant that the act of sexual intercourse could have taken place anytime after 2 pm on August 18. this was not of much help as Sunita was alone with her husband on August 18, till 9.30 pm. and that act could reasonably have been done by Rajesh himself. Chauhan was desperate to prove himself right and he went to Rajesh and interrogated him. Certainly a strange question to ask from a recently bereaved husband, yet the investigation had to be completed. Rajesh admitted demurely that he and Sunita had sexual intercourse on that day at about 5 pm. Chauhan's theory was still not busted because even after this, Talwar could have indulged in sex with her. I had not said that Sunita had only one act of intercourse. The only thing I could say was that she had engaged in sex shortly before her death. Nobody could have said anything about the number of acts she had gone through. I now concentrated on the scene of crime‑ the place where Sunita's body was found and not before long I found two short clippings of nail on the floor. It appeared that Sunita had violently resisted on attack on her and during the scuffle, the assailant tried to scratch her. During this act the nail of the assailant broke and fell on the ground. When we examined Talwar's hands all his nails had been recently clipped. Chauhan insisted that Talwar had become aware of his broken nails and to hide this fact he had clipped all his nails. Anyway, I managed to take a small sliver of nail from each of Talwar's fingers. In 2 hours, I was able to tell Chauhan with cent per cent certainty that Talwar was not the culprit. How did I do this feat? Well! before I go ahead, look at your nails very carefully. You will find long striations over them, some of them are thick and some are thin. These striations are there in a fixed pattern in each individual. Every individual could be recognized positively by his unique pattern of nail striations. I tried to match the striations of the broken nails, I had found on the floor with the striations of nail silvers I had clipped from Talwar's hands. I tried hard to match them but couldn't match them at all. We can look at the nail clippings in three major ways. Fig 1 shows all these three ways. One is to look at the untreated fingernail. A better way is to first put a thin layer of metal on the fingernail and then look at it. Another way is to look at it between crossed Polaroid films. Very few crime specialists like to look at the nails in the last way but for the sake of completeness I have mentioned all the ways. Another important fact to remember is that the striations would not match even in twins sisters. Both fingernails have been taken from the left little finger. You can easily find out that the striations do not match at all. The striations also do not change over a period of time. They remain constant and are thus a very valuable tool for positive identification. Fig 3 shows 4 clippings form the same person, taken over a period of 10 years. You can see that all striations match perfectly with each other. So, these clippings really came as a boon for Talwar. He had been arguing about his innocence from the moment he was apprehended but nobody was ready to believe him. In fact all the available evidences pointed so strongly at him that nobody could think in a different way. Now, that Talwar was exonerated, the police made more searches. Rajesh reported very soon that from his almirah some jewellery and cash were missing. The theory now shifted to that of burglary. Three noted burglars of the area were apprehended after 15 days. I took nail clippings of all the three and could say positively that out of them Kartar Singh was the one, who had committed the burglary and murder. His nails striations matched perfectly with those I found on the floor. On sustained interrogations Kartar Singh admitted his guilt. In the court too, Kartar Singh confessed his crime. The court gave due importance to my medical evidence and Kartar Singh was jailed for life. It was at that moment that Talwar came to me and touched my feet. It was my evidence based on science, which had exonerated him. I sometimes think now, what would have happened, had I not found those clipping, had I not found those clippings? Sooner or later Rajesh would have discovered that his cash and jewellery were missing. But, could merely that finding, in the absence of clippings, have saved Talwar? Could Talwar's lawyer successfully plead in the court that it was the work of a burglar and not of Talwar, because cash and jewellery were missing? I think no, because the prosecution could have argued that Talwar took away cash and jewellery just to give it the look of burglary. Talwar would have been in a difficult position to counter such argument. In fact, in past, sexual murders have been committed by family friends, who have done just this to give the whole situation a look of burglary. Anyway, even if court would have given him the benefit of doubt (which I feel impossible). Talwar would have undergone the agony of a long court ordeal. The finding of nail clippings exonerated him completely in just one go. *** Afterword: The pictures were taken from the following paper: MacDonell HL, Bialousz LF (1973) Evaluation of Human fingernails as a means of personal identifation. Legal Medicine Annual: Nineteen Seventy-three (Series Editor, Cyril H. Wecht), pages 133-144 I have kept the scans of these pictures in the following folder: F:\anil2\C&D\Scanned Journals\Legal_Medicine_Annuals\1973 In the Manipur conference held in 1998, Professor P.K. Chattopadhyay took a lecture in which he cited fingernail striations as a new means of identification. I met him outside the hall, and told him that it was a very old method and that I had even written about it. He later wrote a letter to me, asking for the article and I sent him. Later I found another reference in Professor Anthony Busuttil’s Book “Suspicious Death Scene Investigation” page 63. The reference is:- Thomas F. and Baert H. (1965) A new means of identification of the human being: the longitudinal striations of the nails. Med. Sci. Law 5 , 39-40

SCIENCE IN CRIME DETECTION-8 WHEN THE BODY TURNS INTO WAX ! Saroj, 16, and Mahendra, 12 were brother and sister. On June 8, 1987, they went to play as usual in the garden, but they never returned. Saroj was a beautiful girl and her parents were always quite reserved in allowing her out alone. On that day however, she was able to cajole her parents into allowing her to go out with her brother. A complaint with the police did not result in any benefit either. The police asked various questions, including about the people the parents suspected. But the family had no enemies whatsoever. As time passed, it became clear that Saroj and Mahendra were kidnapped by some gang, presumably with the purpose of having intercourse with Saroj. There was a gang in town which had once kidnapped a young 19 year old girl, kept her in detention for as many as three months, during which she was forced into intercourse day and night. When the gang members were tired of sex, they would all sit together in a circle and ask her to perform naked dances in the center. After meting out this inhuman treatment to her for three months, they finally did away with her. Her body was found three and a half months later, quite putrefied in a forest. Only one member of the gang could be arrested and from him, the whole story was revealed. The body bore several stab marks, which showed that the modus operandi of the gang was to kill by stabbing. Lakhiram and Revati, the parents of Saroj and Mahendra shivered at this thought. They kept searching for their children, but without any success. On January 15, 1988, one highly putrefied body was found in a forest about 50 miles away from the village of Lakhiram and Revati. Most of the body had been eaten away by animals and maggots were crawling on what remained of the corpse. It was impossible to identify the dead person from the remains. I was called by the police inspector at the place. I made some preliminary examination of the bone and told the police that the bones belonged to a male between 11 and 13 years of age. Moreover, the person, whoever he was, had suffered osteomyelitis (an infection of the bone) in his right leg, about two year before. This description fitted Mahendra exactly. Lakhiram and Revati were immediately contacted and they admitted that Mahendra had suffered from a terrible weeping sore about two and a half years back and also that the sore had healed with great difficulty after about six months of treatment. This, of course, is not the main part of the story. This only established that the victim was Mahendra. But I could not say who had killed him or how had he been killed. This was vital for the police to know. One thing however became clear. If Mahendra had been killed, it was quite possible that his sister Saroj had also been killed and was disposed off in a nearby area itself. A police party launched a massive search for the body of Saroj. They were expecting her body, too, to be in the same state of deterioration; so everyone's stomach was turning topsy-turvy. But lo and behold! Two days later a constable of the search party accidentally stumbled upon a quite well-preserved body of a teenaged girl on the shores of a nearby pond. The body was naked and so well preserved that everybody could at once recognize it was Saroj. When the search party touched the body, it felt as it was like soft wax. Everyone was nonplussed. What had happened to Saroj? I was called immediately. When I arrived there and looked at the body, I realized at once that I was dealing with an adipocere. I rubbed some of the body's material between my thumb and index finger. It gave me a cheesy feeling. I smelt the material. The smell was somewhat similar to that of old cheese. Here then was the body of Saroj, turned into adipocere and intuitively I knew that now I could tell a lot of things to the police regarding the crime. Let us introduce a red herring into the story and first see what an adipocere is. The word adipocere comes from two Latin words, adeps meaning fat and sera meaning wax. It is also known by several other names such as Grave Wax, Mortuary Fat , or Saponified Tissue . This is a situation when the body fat turns into wax under certain special conditions. When a person is killed and thrown away in a forest, his body will normally putrefy. But if there is water in the vicinity or the ground on which the body is thrown is wet and the temperature is quite high then the conditions are just right for the body fats to turn into wax. A very complex chemical reaction takes place for this to happen. For the more scientifically-minded readers, the unsaturated body fats are first saturated to firmer fats and this firmer fat is then split into fatty acids and glycerol. Glycerol usually drains away. The remaining fatty acids (mainly saturated fatty acids such as palmatic acid, stearic acid, hydroxystearic acid and oleic acid) may then combine with body calcium to form soaps and waxes. Adipocere is thus essentially composed of saturated fatty acids such as palmatic acid, stearic acid, hydroxystearic acid, oleic acid and their calcium salts. Adipocere forms mainly at those parts of the body where there is a lot of accumulation of body fat. Such areas are cheeks, buttocks, breasts and thighs. Since Saroj's body had been thrown near a pond, the conditions were just right for her body to be turned into adipocere. Once a body turns into adipocere, it does not undergo normal decomposition, and remains as such. It gives the forensic expert a lot of benefits. For one thing, the features of the person remain discernible. Secondly, since the body is more or less preserved, one can say how the person died. Adipocere is a yellowish white, greasy, wax like substance with a rancid smell. It is lighter than water. If we cut out some adipocere from the body of such a person, and put it in water, we find that it will float. It cuts easily and burns with a faint yellow flame giving offensive odor. Fresh adipocere is soft and moist, but old samples are dry and brittle. Adipocere takes about 3 months to form, so we can form a idea when the person was done to death. The body of Saroj was found on January 15, 1988. So, at a rough guess, she must have been killed on or around October 15, 1987. She had been kidnapped on June 8, 1987. So it appeared that she had been kept in captivity for about 4 months. This pointed to her having been used for sexual purposes. Since her body was well preserved, I could examine her genitals, which too had been converted into adipocere. Her hymen, the soft membrane which cover the vagina, was completely mutilated indicating that she had indeed been used for sexual intercourse. Her left breast and both buttocks showed very clear stab wounds. These stab wounds would normally have been obliterated if normal putrefaction had set in. But since her body had been converted into the wax-like adipocere, the stab marks were clearly visible. Her kidnapping and confinement, her use as an object of sexual intercourse and the method of her killing, all pointed to the dreaded Devi gang which had earlier done the same deed. Devi gang had big political connections and until and unless the police had solid clues to back them, they could not dare to touch the gang. But now since I had provided them with all vital clues, they went fully armed to nab the Devi Gang and made tough inquires. Sure enough, very soon, the gang cracked up and confessed to the abduction, sexual molestation and killing of Saroj. They had to finally kill Saroj because she had become pregnant. When the case went to court, the court admitted my medical evidence and had no difficulty in convicting the members of Devi gang. In this particular case, my knowledge of science helped me to unravel crime. A non-specialist would have been quite nonplussed to see the waxy body of Saroj, but I knew it was adipocere. To summarize, this adipocere formation helped me to (i) establish her identity (ii) establish the cause of her death and (iii) indicate the time of her death. These facts together enabled me to weave a coherent story which ultimately helped in catching the culprits.