Forensic Science Fiction The mystery of the drowned man The man had been drowned for five days! At least that is what Dr. Khanna made me believe. Dr. Sunil Khanna as we all know is a leading forensic expert of our country and his opinion had to be respected. Well! before proceeding further, I shall explain what forensic experts are. They are doctors who, among other things, cut up dead bodies and try to find out the cause and manner of death. After we completed our graduation in medicine, we decided to devote our energies to the detection of crime, rather than to the routine, drab, utterly boring checking of festering sores, furred tongues, missed heart-beats, aberrant pulse rates and bizarre temperature patterns. Coming back to our case. The man was ultimately identified as one Ramlal. When the police made investigations, they came up with some rather dubious evidence that Ramlal had been killed by Jagga and then thrown in the Indian Ocean, off the coast of Gujrat. It is well-known that in our country, criminals often kill their victims and then do dispose of the body by throwing it in this manner in deep ocean, river, lake or pond or some such similar body of water where it would be difficult to retrieve the body for quite some time. But it so happened that I personally knew Jagga and was quite convinced that Jagga could not kill anybody. I talked to Jagga, and after talking to him, I became all the more convinced that Jagga was not the killer. When I talked to Jagga, he categorically denied his hand in Ramlal's killing. He requested me to save him from the clutches of the law. Well then, if Ramlal had not been killed by Jagga, how had he died. I surmised that Ramlal must have gone to the sea shore for a bath and then must have been carried away by the tidal waves. He thus drowned accidentally. But I was told that Ramlal was an accomplished swimmer. If this was true how could he drown accidentally? Well, even accomplished swimmers have been known to drown in sea water. The tidal waves are really very strong, and can carry the person deep inside the ocean in no time. Before the person has time to think, he finds himself deep inside in the sea. The waves are so forceful that they do not allow him to swim back to the shore. The person gets exhausted and ultimately drowns. This is what should have happened to Ramlal. But the law wants solid proof. The courts do not pay attention to mere conjectures. If I wanted to save Jagga, I had to produce some real good scientific evidence in favour of my theory of accidental drowning. The police was bent upon implicating Jagga. They had even requested the court and taken him in police remand for a period of 15 days. I had to do something fast. I consulted Dr. Khanna and he suggested me that our question basically boiled down to proving that Ramlal's drowning was a case of antemortem drowning. If the police version was correct, then Ramlal's drowning was a case of post-mortem drowning. Before proceeding further, I must tell you a little bit about ante-mortem drowning and post-mortem drowning, in case you are unaware of it. This is an age old question in forensic medicine and one for which no satisfactory answer has been found yet. Basically ante-mortem drowning means that the person drowned when he was still alive. Post-mortem drowning on the other hand, means that the person was first killed by someone and then thrown in water to conceal crime. While post-mortem drowning almost certainly points to homicide, ante-mortem drowning could be anything; accidental, suicidal or homicidal, roughly in that order. It is rather difficult for someone to drown a conscious adult person with homicidal intent, so on the face of it, a case of ante-mortem drowning goes against homicidal drowning. I had to do an autopsy on the dead body of Ramlal and find out the cause and manner of his death. Now if I could prove that it was a case of antemortem drowning, it would go in favour of my theory that Ramlal had died accidentally while taking a swim. If on the other hand the autopsy showed it to be a case of post-mortem drowning, it would be a very strong evidence in favour of the police theory that Jagga had done him to death and then thrown away the dead body in the ocean. Of course we forensic scientists know that one of the best ways to differentiate between ante-mortem and post-mortem drowning is to conduct the so-called diatom test. I won't bother you with details, but just give you the outline of the principle of this test so that you could follow the story better. In all bodies of water- in rivers, lakes, ponds, oceans, even in tap water- are present some minute microscopic unicellular organisms called diatoms. These are microscopic algae with hard and highly refractile silicon shells. They come in all kinds of shapes; in fact about 15,000 different species are known. Under the microscope they all appear very beautiful and symmetrical, presenting rather a kaleidoscopic picture. Diatoms are quite abundant. A mere c.c. of water would contain literally thousands of diatoms. Now if a man drowns while he is still alive, he would make violent efforts to respire. Water would enter his respiratory passages along with respiratory air, and would reach the alveoli, the fine balloon like terminals of the lungs. Sure enough diatoms would also reach the alveoli along with the water. Due to the violent respiratory efforts, some of the alveoli would get ruptured causing the water (and the diatoms along with it) to be sucked in the tiny blood vessels lining the alveoli. From here they would find their way to the left chamber of the heart and from there the aorta would pump this water (and the diatoms along with it) to all the conceivable organs of the body- liver, spleen, brain, bone marrow, everywhere. In case the person was thrown in the water when he was already dead, neither his lungs, nor his heart would be functioning. Thus in the first place almost no diatoms would enter the lungs. If due to sheer pressure of water, some diatoms did enter the lungs, they would not be able to penetrate the alveolar wall. Further, for the sake of argument if we assume that the water pressure was enough to break some of the alveoli, and some diatoms did enter the alveolar blood vessels, they couldn't be pumped to all the systemic organs for the simple reason that the heart would not be beating. Thus a simple test to prove a case of antemortem or postmortem drowning was simply to look for diatoms in some internal organ, say liver or spleen or brain. If you found diatoms there, it was a case of antemortem drowning; if you didn't find any, it was of course a case of postmortem drowning. When I conducted a post mortem on the body of Ramlal, I found all his internal body organs literally infested with diatoms. Diatoms were to be found everywhere- in his liver, spleen, brain, bone-marrow, everywhere. This naturally made me very jubilant, as this proved beyond doubt that my theory was correct and Ramlal had indeed died while he was alive. But when I contacted Dr. Khanna with these findings, he seemed doubtful. He reminded me that the diatom test was in fact challengeable. Well, I will digress for a moment and tell you why he said so. It so happens that the diatoms are rather ubiquitous; they are present in all bodies of water- even in the tap water as I have already said. Now imagine a situation when a person has been drinking tap water all his life. Suppose he has an ulcer in his stomach (or for that matter, even some minor abrasion anywhere in his gastrointestinal tract) the diatoms would be entering his circulation all his life and be pumped throughout his internal organs. The internal organs of such a person would show diatoms irrespective of the cause of his death. Such a person might die of, say, electrocution and yet his internal body organs would show diatoms. Dr. Khanna rightly told me that my findings could be challenged by a well-informed prosecution. I could see his point, especially as I knew the prosecution was taking the help of Dr. George Paul, another well-known medico-legal expert of our country. Certainly Dr. George Paul, when called to the court would rip my theory apart. What should I do then? This question gave me many restless moments. Then like a flash of lightning, a possible solution crossed my mind. I recalled that a few days back, there had been a big oil spill off the coast of Gujrat. A big oil tanker had been bringing crude petroleum somewhere from the Gulf, when just off the coast of Gujrat, a crack appeared on the bottom of the tanker and many thousand tonnes of crude oil leaked into the sea. This incident had been the talk of several environmentalists, especially as this was causing threat to marine life. Well, if there was crude oil in the sea water, and if Ramlal was breathing at the time of immersion (as I believed), then some petroleum must have seeped into his circulation, through the same route as the diatoms would normally take in a breathing man. This would result in traces of petroleum being present in his internal body organs. If I found traces of petroleum in, say, liver or spleen, I could prove my point beyond doubt. In that case, Dr. George Paul was definitely going to have a hard time explaining how it reached there, otherwise than what I was suggesting. We all know that petroleum is not a normal constituent of the body and no sane person drinks petroleum, so indeed there was no conceivable way for the petroleum to reach the internal body organs other than through ante-mortem drowning. This naturally made me very jubilant, and I used our newly acquired Gas-Liquid Chromatograph to determine petroleum in Ramlal's body organs. But contrary to my expectations, Ramlal's internal body organs failed to show any trace of petroleum. What had gone wrong? Well, Dr. Khanna suggested that may be I was wrong from the very beginning. Ramlal was indeed killed by Jagga first and then thrown in sea water. Otherwise why didn't I find petroleum in Ramlal's internal organs? Failure to find petroleum there meant only one thing- that Ramlal was not respiring at the time of his immersion in water. But I refused to believe Dr. Khanna. Something deep inside my heart told me that Jagga was innocent. But if he was innocent why was I not getting any traces of petroleum in Ramlal's internal body organs? That was the sixty-four thousand dollar question. Soon I forgot the question anyway. Meanwhile Dr. Khanna and I jointly started an ICMR project in which we intended to find out the etiology of solvent abuse or glue sniffing. It is a poorly understood phenomenon, in which the addict gets an inordinate pleasure in sniffing various hydrocarbons. Most commonly sniffed substances include various glues, paint thinners, gasoline, chloroform, carbon tetrachloride and so on. We were trying to find a biological cause for this phenomenon. It so happened that one day I was talking casually to Dr. S.K.Gupta, Professor of Biochemistry in our college. He was working on some new cellular enzymes, and his work was being internationally appreciated. While talking to him, suddenly a weird thought crossed my mind, and I ran back to my department, silently crying "Eureka", much in Archimedean fashion. Thank God I had my clothes on! I retrieved some of Ramlal's tissues I still had in bottles, and brought them back to Dr. Gupta. I asked him to look for a specific cellular enzyme, which had not been discovered till then. Dr. Gupta, as is his wont, told me I was a fool, but I let that pass, and asked him to look for that enzyme anyway. But after a few days, Dr. Gupta was quite surprised that I was right. He could indeed find the enzyme I had asked him to look for. In fact he reported that the cells were very rich in that enzyme. I know you are getting curious. What was that enzyme, you may ask. You will laugh at what I will tell you, but you can confirm it from Dr. Gupta who has lab reports to confirm my statement. In fact even he would not have believed me, had he not found the enzyme himself. This was an entirely new enzyme. An enzyme which metabolizes hydrocarbons! Dr. Gupta suggested that we should call it Petroleum dehydrogenase. Dr. Gupta found 50 microgrammes of Petroleum dehydrogenase per c.c. of tissue, which is quite high as you can understand. A minor mutation in Ramlal's body gave rise to that enzyme. He was a mutant in other words. Well, how does this fact fit in our story. I will tell you shortly. But first things first. While talking to Dr. Gupta, I was subconsciously working on my own multifarious problems and suddenly it occurred to me that the solution to my problems lay in the realm of biochemistry. Perhaps Ramlal had an enzyme in his tissues which metabolized any petroleum that had seeped in his body cells during drowning. Now we were indeed able to find that enzyme in Ramlal's body cells. This changed our investigation much in our favour. I will tell you what happened. Ramlal was indeed breathing at the time of immersion. Some petroleum did seep inside his circulation and got deposited in his internal organs as explained earlier. Molecular death, as we all know occurs a few hours after the somatic death. Somatic death is the time when a doctor pronounces a person dead. But we all know that molecular activity continues for a few hours after that. During the interval between the somatic and the molecular death, the enzyme Petroleum dehydrogenase metabolized any traces of petroleum that had seeped in Ramlal's body tissues. That was the reason why we did not find any traces of petroleum in Ramlal's body despite the fact that he died while still breathing. You might say this is spurious reasoning. It is quite possible that there was no petroleum in Ramlal's tissues in the first place. Merely the fact that the enzyme Petroleum dehydrogenase had been discovered in Ramlal's tissues does not necessarily mean that this was responsible for the absence of crude petroleum in his tissues. This was certainly one of the possibilities but the possibility of crude petroleum being absent in Ramlal's tissues from the very beginning could not be ruled out. I knew if confronted with my new findings, Dr. George Paul would certainly come up with this question. So I decided to play one up on him from the very beginning. I took out Ramlal's preserved tissues once again, and looked for the metabolites of Petroleum in them. I had worked out its metabolites in detail, and one of them was 2-Butyne. In my renewed analysis with my Gas-Liquid Chromatograph, I looked not for petroleum but for its metabolites, mainly 2-Butyne. You can perhaps imagine my joy when I found fairly rich quantities of 2-Butyne in Ramlal's tissues. Earlier when I was not specifically looking for it, I met with failure, but now I knew what I had to look for and sure enough I got it. All of us know that 2-Butyne is not a normal constituent of body cells. Thus the only way it could have accumulated in the tissues is through metabolism of crude petroleum by the enzyme Petroleum dehydrogenase. This was the final vindication of my theory. Of course if Ramlal had survived longer, even 2-Butyne would have got metabolized further to carbon dioxide and water. Petroleum dehydrogenase was capable of metabolizing all hydrocarbons down to their very basic elements. I knew I had killed two birds with one stone. I enquired from his family members and was quite satisfied to find out that Ramlal was a glue sniffer. In fact I was quite sure of this fact when I was submitting his tissues to Dr. Gupta. I will tell you now what happens in a glue sniffer. These glue sniffers are all mutants. They have the enzyme Petroleum dehydrogenase in their body cells. Petroleum dehydrogenase is able to metabolize not only petroleum products but all hydrocarbons, liberating a good amount of energy in the process. These glue sniffers sometime during the course of their life discover accidentally that sniffing hydrocarbons gives them a renewed sense of well-being. What actually happens is that they are able to metabolize the hydrocarbons quite effectively which gives them short bursts of energy, which they construe as a sense of rejuvenation or well-being. They ultimately get addicted to the hydrocarbons. So now Dr. Khanna and I had hit upon an entirely new and novel theory of glue-sniffing. Initially Dr. Khanna was quite hesitant about accepting it, but I am happy to tell you that since my fateful meeting with Dr. Gupta, I have submitted blood samples of more than 50 glue sniffers to Dr. Gupta and he has found Petroleum dehydrogenase in all of them, which is a good confirmation of my theory! Thanks to Ramlal's death mystery, we found out a solution to an age old forensic question. Oh, yes, I must also tell you that the court admitted my findings and released Jagga. But the thing that satisfied me most, was that when Dr. Khanna read our paper on glue sniffing at The International Conference on Drug Addiction at Tokyo next year, it was adjudged the best paper of the conference! *** This story was published in Spandan, 1995-96 on Pages 13-17

Forensic Science Fiction

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Forensic Toxicology THE FOLLOWING ARTICLE APPEARED IN THE NOVEMBER 1997 ISSUE THE POISON SLEUTHS POISONING BY CAPSAICIN -Dr. Anil Aggrawal "Good morning doctor. Oh, my God, what are you doing today. You seem to be doing the post-mortem on a very young infant. What happened to her? Please tell me." "Good morning Tarun. The name of this young 5 month old girl is Neeta. She was born to Pyarelal and his first wife Seema. Just after her birth, Seema expired because of some complication. Pyarelal soon remarried another woman Anita, apparently because he wanted someone to look after his young daughter. But from her behavior it did not appear that Anita had any great liking for Neeta. She would often keep her hungry and would torture her in several other ways. There were rumors that Anita even wanted to do away with Neeta for good. In fact she wanted that her own children - as and when they were born- get due importance in the family....." "So you think that Anita has killed this young child?" "No, I didn't say that. But certainly all facts have to be kept in mind while investigating suspicious deaths." "What do the parents of the girl say?" "The father Pyarelal was in the office when the girl died. The girl's stepmother Anita says that she had given milk to the child at 10 am in the morning, soon after Pyarelal left home for office. After that Anita put her to sleep and got busy in her household chores. At 2 pm when she wanted to give her the second feed, she found that the child was lying listless in the cot. She panicked and immediately phoned Pyarelal. He came home at once. A doctor was called, but when he found that the child was dead, he suspected some foul play, and informed the police. The police conducted some preliminary investigations, and then handed over the body to me, to find the cause of death." "So what have you found out?" "Tarun, you won't believe it but I have found a very strange cause of death in this case. She was poisoned by a very exotic poison.." "What is that poison doctor? Please tell me, I am getting curious." "Tarun, the poison in this case is a chemical known as Capsaicin. It might sound a very alien name to you, but it is found in a very common household item- chilies. In other words, Neeta was done to death with chilies!" "What? I don't believe that. How can anyone kill with chilies?" "Tarun, Chilies contain an exceedingly acrid, volatile poisonous substance Capsaicin. It is because of this substance that capsicum has a pungent smell and taste. In India, capsicum fruits are powdered and universally employed as a condiment known as red pepper or lal mirch. You may be surprised but chilies are used in India for a lot of criminal activities. They are used by the police for the purpose of torture for instance...." "Really? Well, I am beginning to believe that Capsaicin indeed is an interesting poison. Why don't we begin from the beginning doctor?" "Oh sure Tarun. There are so many interesting tales to tell about capsicum and its active principle capsaicin. While capsaicin in small quantities may tickle our palates, in large quantities, it may act as a poison. The fatal dose of capsaicin has been estimated to be about 150 mg/kg in mice and rats. Taking the same figure to be true for a human being, it would take almost 9 g of capsaicin to kill an adult human being weighing 60 Kg. This is rather a large amount as far as homicidal poisons go, but small children can be killed with far lesser doses. Experimental rats and mice die within 4 to 26 min after the fatal dose, so it appears to be rather a quick poison..." "Doctor, how does a person die of capsaicin?" "Tarun, as I told earlier death by chilies is unusual except in very small children. Death by capsaicin is due to fall in blood pressure and stoppage of respiration. At autopsy, the stomach lining is found to intense red due to irritation and there may be erosions and even ulcers." "Doctor, you said there are so many interesting tales about chilies and capsaicin. Please let me know some of them." "Sure. Tarun, chili plant belongs to the family Solanaceae. History of this plant is most interesting. Archaeological findings show that capsicum was eaten in Mexico already in prehistorical ages back to 7000 B.C. It was one of the first plants domesticated in the Americas. Beautiful pictures of Capsicum fruits are seen on pottery of the Nazca Culture in the Southern part of Peru; the fruits are linked to the forelegs of the "Mottled Cat" which was a fructiferous symbol. It is said that when Columbus arrived in 1492 in San Salvador, Cuba and Haiti, it was not only the first step into the New World, but also the entrance right into the center of the "Capsicum Countries". In his first letter to the Spanish Catholic Majesties Ferdinand and Isabella, he already mentioned the habit of the people to eat meat with very hot spices. On his second voyage he was accompanied by the physician Dr. Diego Alvarez Chanca from Sevilla. He gave the first detailed report about the hot spice called Agi, which was nothing but modern day chili. Fernandez de Ovieto described the plant in detail and mentioned already its common use by the Spaniards. Cortez regarded in a letter in 1526 Agi as one of the most valuable products of Mexico, saying clearly that he enjoyed the hot taste of this spice. Quite soon an exchange of seeds and plants between the Old and the New World took place: oranges, lemons, melons and grapes were brought to the West, capsicum, tobacco and maize to the East. It is remarkable that the ancient name Agi or Aji remain in use until present days in the territory formerly governed by the Inca. Tschudi, a Swiss traveller, who gave a detailed description of life in Peru around 1840, mentioned the meal "Piccante" being served for lunch every day. It contained so much Agi that after a few spoons the mouth started to burn like glowing coal. He mentioned that one soon got adapted and acquired a preference for the condiment; even the ingestion of large amounts of these hot fruits was devoid of any adverse effects on the gastro-intestinal tract. I may tell you here that an acetic acid extract of only two capsicum fruits, when applied to the skin, produces severe pain and reddening, followed by the formation of a blister." "Oh, so chilies were very common in South America, even in prehistoric ages. Were they used for killing in those times too?" "If they were, no records exist of such killings. Capsicum however captured the imagination of people as a condiment. Within a few decades after Columbus, Capsicum had been distributed world-wide. Its distribution in Europe started with the cultivation and use as a spice in the Iberian peninsula. It is however unknown whether Capsicum came from there to other parts of Europe. It seems more likely that Portuguese trade connections to Ormuz in Persia in 1513 and Diu in India in 1538 opened the way for Capsicum to Ottoman Turks. Capsicum probably reached Central Europe concomitantly with their invasion of the Balkan peninsula and of Hungary which was occupied by them for about 150 years. The collection of Herbal woodcuts, published by Leonhard Fuchs in 1545 in Basle, contained already three plates of Capsicum under the name of Indian and Calicut pepper. Capsicum was cultivated in monastery gardens of that time, as documented e.g. in Brünn (Brno) in Moravia in 1566. It seems that Capsicum was highly welcomed as spice in Europe to substitute for black pepper. From Greek and Roman times on, aromatic spices and frankincense came from the Orient to Europe via secret trade connections. These links between the Lands of Spices and Europe were for centuries the monopoly of Arabs and Venetian merchants, resulting in an exorbitant price for pepper. So costly was pepper that only very rich traders could expect to trade in it. It may interest you to know that in Germany even today, rich traders are called "Pfeffersäcke" which means pepper sacks! Black pepper, the spice most sought after, was so costly in old days that it was counted out peppercorn by peppercorn!" "Doctor, earlier you mentioned about the name Aji for chilies. I usually eat pepperoni pizza which contains lot of chilies. Now after talking to you, I realize the word "pepperoni" contains the word "pepper" too." "Yes, that's a good observation. Chili is known by a number of names around the world. In the West Indies and South America the ancient name "Aji" is still in use. In Mexico the Nahuatl word "Chili" was used when the Spaniards arrived; the name remained in use not only in Mexico but also in Northern America as chili or chili. The name of the long black pepper of India, Piper longum, was soon also used for Capsicum and remained in use as "pepper" in most English-speaking countries. Pepperoni is actually the name of a fairly hot variety of capsicum which is eaten in Italy. In Europe, Capsicum found its main domicile in Hungary. The Hungarian name paprika stems from the Slavic name peperke used in Balkan countries for pepper. Another version, although not based on linguistic sources, seems to be more charming: The Hungarian diminutive form for Ilona is Ilonka, and Mary is Marika. On the same lines it has been suggested that paprika was the definition for a small pepper!" "Doctor, how many varieties of capsicum exist in the world?" "Tarun, there are about 1600 to 1700 varieties of Capsicum in the world, but only around 200 of them are commercially available. The Mombasa variety, the black chili from Africa, is too hot to be eaten; it would blister the mouth! Other varieties are as mild as green peas and do not contain capsaicin." "That's interesting. Doctor, tell me why do people eat peppers, chili or paprika at all? Doesn't it appear more or less like a paradox to you? Chilies are so hot; by no stretch of imagination can they be called pleasant, yet people seem to enjoy the hot taste of chills. Why?" "Tarun, you must remember that highly spiced meals, flavored with chili, chili-containing curry, black or green pepper or ginger are preferentially consumed in countries with hot climates such as India. The common experience during such a fairly hot meal is sweating beginning in the face. This occurs only in hot climates or in a warm restaurant, but not in a cold environment. It is called gustatory sweating because it differs from sweating following physical exercise, protecting against hot environment or expressing emotional stress. The effect of gustatory sweating is explained by the action of capsaicin on thermoregulation. It stimulates heat sensitive fibers in the periphery and the temperature regulation center. This results in sweating, which is basically a heat loss reaction. This effect is observed not only in man but also in rats. This also counteracts the heat production by a heavy meal and facilitates food intake in hot climates. All these facts explain the enormous fascination of people with chilies. So high is the consumption of chilies in the world, especially in hot climates that the world-wide production of Capsicum is estimated to be in the range of 6 million metric tons each year. There is even an International Chili Society which arranges Local and World Championship Chili Cookoffs, thus connecting peppers with entertainment! Capsicum plays a very interesting cosmetic role in chickens too which has nothing to do with the action of pungent capsaicin..." "What is that?" "Tarun, when chickens have access to green food in springtime their feet become bright yellow and the yolk of their eggs almost orange red. This is based on the rising intake of carotenoils. Thus bright yellow color of chicken's feet and orange red color of egg yolks is indicative of the fact that chickens have had a lot of green food. In fact this is often touted as a "healthy color" to the customers. Quite strangely poultry owners can produce a similar color in their chickens without giving them green food." "How?" "Tarun, besides capsaicin, chilies also contain Capsanthin which is the red pigment of ripe paprika pods and accounts for about one third of their colorants. The red color of chilies is because of this pigment. When this red pigment is included in the food of chickens, a similar change in color in chicken's legs and in their egg yolks appears because Capsanthin accumulates there. The interpretation that the "healthy color" of legs or egg yolk is linked to life of chickens in open air is therefore suggested to the customer!" "That is certainly highly interesting doctor. You said earlier, that chilies are used for a lot of criminal activities in India. Can you tell me about some?" "Oh, sure. To begin with, I must tell you that homicide by pepper although a rarity, is a distinct possibility. The first report of a case of homicide by pepper in world's literature was published in 1964. Homicidal asphyxia by pepper has also been reported. In such cases, the pepper is forcibly introduced in the nostrils and mouth of very young children who get asphyxiated. Another reported criminal use of pepper is by robbers. They often throw chili dust in the eyes of their victims to "blind" them temporarily to facilitate robbery. This act can in fact be done by anyone to temporarily inactivate his enemy or opponent. Chili powder is often used by police in our country- and in fact in several third-world countries- to extract confession from criminals. It may be introduced in the mouth, nose, anus, urethra or vagina to torture a suspect and extract confession from him. It is said that during emergency in India in 1976, chilies were used as a means of torture by introducing them in rectum! This process was known as Hyderabadi Goli. In India, superstitious people use chili fumes to "scare away" ghosts and spirits. These fumes are very irritating to the eyes and the nasal passages and can cause severe inflammation. Such practices can cause severe breathing problems in children, if they are around. Finally, in our country, chili powder is often introduced in the vagina as a punishment for infidelity." "Doctor, what symptoms does the victim experience when chili powder is given to him?" "Tarun, capsaicin is mainly an irritant poison. Applied to skin, it causes irritation and vesication. When ingested in sufficient quantities, it acts as an irritant poison, with the usual symptoms of vomiting and diarrhoea and a burning sensation in the mouth, throat and stomach. Burning sensation also occurs during defecation. When thrown in the eyes, it can cause severe burning pain, watering of the eyes, intense spasm of the eyelids and photophobia, which is another term for sensitiveness to intense light. It is for this reason, that robbers and thugs use chili powder on their victims to rob them. Capsaicin is volatile and because of this, fumes arising from burning capsicum are highly irritant. Major toxic symptoms in experimental rats and mice are salivation, erythema of skin, staggering gait, slowing of respiration often leading to difficult and labored breathing, blueness of skin, tremor, convulsions." "Doctor, I feel now I know fair enough about capsaicin. I am now ready to see the autopsy of this young child. What important findings are present in this child?" "Tarun, when this child was brought to my dissection table, I noticed some pepper, or lal mirch as you would call it, sticking to her clothes. This immediately alerted me of some foul play, especially as I knew that pepper can be used to liquidate unwanted children. I asked about the relationship of the mother with the child in detail and the history made me still more suspicious. Then I looked at her mouth, and I was stunned to see lot of red pepper in her mouth. On opening her food pipe and stomach, I found still larger quantities of red pepper there too, which almost solved my case. Not only that, there were large quantities of red pepper in her windpipe and bronchi too. I can now imagine what must have happened. When Pyarelal left for office, Anita waited for some time. Then she brought a fistful of red pepper from her kitchen and forcibly introduced it in the child's mouth. The poor child could not resist. Whatever resistance she did make only helped to introduce chilies in her nose too. Needless to say, with so much of pepper in her stomach and windpipe, the child soon died. Anita then smoothed out everything, removed the traces of chili powder from her face and from the cot, and phoned her husband at 2 pm. She hoped that she could pass the death off as a natural death. She however forgot to clean Neeta's clothes completely, and I could find traces of chili powder in her clothes which immediately alerted me. Well, even if she had assiduously cleaned her clothes, I would still have found out the cause of death by looking at her stomach and windpipe. Come, let us tell the police that Neeta did not die a natural death; Anita is her killer." "Oh, how very clever of you doctor. This was a most interesting discussion. I never could imagine that chilies could be put to such a draconian use. Tell me what are you going to tell me the next time?" "Tarun, next time, I would tell you about a very deadly poisonous gas- Lysol "

SCIENCE IN CRIME DETECTION-25 DEATH BY STRANGULATION I had a tremendous response for my article " Death by air injection" published in the March,1995 issue of Crime & Detective. Many readers have complained that their clippings, stories and ideas which they have sent to me with great hope have not found their way in my subsequent pieces. I would request all such readers to be patient with me. I am receiving such a heavy mail, that it is not possible for me to include all the letters. Nevertheless I shall try to include as many letters as possible. Needless to say, more useful contributions find their place earlier. One of the best responses that I got for my above named article was from Dr. Ritu Gupta from Nizamuddin, New Delhi. She has sent me a photocopy of page 153 from a book called "Murder What Dunit?" The book is written by JHH Gaute & Robin Odell. It describes a remarkable case in which a doctor killed his patient by air injection. It was a mercy killing. In December 1949, one Dr. Hermann Sander attended one of the patients, Mrs. Abbie Borroto, who was dying of cancer in a New Hampshire hospital. In the presence of a nurse he took a hypodermic syringe and injected 40 cc of air into a vein in the woman's arm. A death certificate was made out giving cancer of large intestine as the cause of death, and the body was duly buried. Some days after the funeral Dr. Sander completed the dead woman's medical record by making a detailed entry of her final treatment, including the injection of air. This virtual confession to mercy killing was spotted by a hospital records clerk who reported it. In due course the newspapers learned of the story, and a great controversy blew up, with the doctor being applauded for an act of mercy killing. Dr. Sander, having refused to reconsider the statement made on his patient's record, was brought to trial in what became known world-wide as `The Mercy Killing Trial'. Thankfully enough, the doctor was found not guilty. A remarkable story indeed on death by air injection. I had thought that killings by air injections could be done only by criminals with criminal intentions. But here is a remarkable case in which a doctor having an exalted place in society killed his patient with air injection. It was done with good intention however. The doctor couldn't see the pain of the patient. He could neither cure her disease, nor lessen her pain. So he deemed it fit to end her life. However whether he did it right or not remains a controversial topic. Readers may send their views on this. Thank you Ritu, for sending us such a nice story related to death by air injection. Readers may keep sending similar stories, newsclippings or other material of interest to me for inclusion in our forthcoming issues. This time I am going to tell you about a very interesting case which I solved in November 1993. On 16th November, 1993, I was called by the police to a house in Vasant Vihar, where they had found the dead body of an 18 year old girl Rajni. Rajni was a student of B.Com. in Delhi University. Her parents were simple middle class people. She had a younger brother, a 15 year old boy called Raju. Rajni was in love with a boy Pramod, who was her colleague in the college. Everybody knew about their love-affair. Her parents were however very much against this love-affair, and had advised their daughter to terminate this affair but she would not listen. Pramod came from a good family, but his company was not good. There were rumors in the campus, that they even had sexual relations. However Rajni had confided everything to Sarita, her best friend. During the police investigations later on, Sarita told the police that Rajni had no sexual relations with Pramod. However only a few days back Rajni had told her that lately Pramod was insisting to start sexual relations with her, but as she was against such things before marriage, she had refuted his advances. Anyway she had not lost her love for Pramod. It was just that she did not want to have sexual relations with him before marriage. On 15th November, 1993 Rajni came home from college at the usual time of 5 pm. She had her evening cup of tea, and then went to meet her friends. She came back again at about 8 pm, had her dinner and went to her room. At about 10 pm, her father heard some voices from her room. Out of curiosity he went to her room, and knocked at the door. Rajni opened the door after an inordinate delay. Her father however saw someone run away from the window. He immediately rushed to the window and saw a shadow rapidly moving away from the house. Her father became very furious with Rajni and asked who had come to meet her. She wouldn't say anything, but his father knew it was Pramod. He woke up his wife and told everything to her. Rajni's mother became very furious and slapped Rajni twice. She also shouted at Rajni and said that she was ruining the name of the family. This drama went up to 11.30 pm after which Rajni's parents left the room. When in the morning, her parents saw the room still closed at 8 am, they became very worried and knocked at the door. When they couldn't get an answer, they called their neighbors. Someone broke open the door. To everyone's horror, Rajni was found dead in her bed with a scarf tied around her neck. Her skirt was folded up showing her thighs and even her undergarments. Her face was congested. The bedclothing had been thrown back in a manner consistent with getting out of bed. There were no signs of any struggle. However I could notice a flower pot which had tipped down. Rajni was dressed in a nightgown. Some bleeding had occurred from her nose which made a stain on the bedding. The tongue was protruded. From the circumstances, it appeared that someone had strangulated her. Rajni's parents immediately accused Pramod. Her father told the police that he had indeed visited his daughter the previous night, and had entered their house through the drainage pipe. He said that when he caught him in some dastardly act, he ran away from the house. His contention was that Pramod came again after sometime, and killed her. Sarita's statement that lately Pramod was demanding sexual intercourse from her, seemed to corroborate the story that Pramod had indeed killed her. It was quite possible that Pramod came back again after some time, demanded sexual intercourse from Rajni, and when she wouldn't relent, he strangulated her out of frustration. When Pramod was contacted and told that Rajni had died, he seemed perturbed. However he could not give satisfactory answer as to where he was on the night of 15 Nov. Police swung in action and arrested Pramod even as he kept insisting about his innocence. It was at this stage that Rajni's dead body was brought to me for post-mortem. Here I would like to say a few facts about strangulation before we go on further. Strangulation is a kind of death in which the neck is compressed by a ligature. By and large strangulation points to homicide. Although one can commit suicide by strangulating himself, such cases are not very common. I generally take a case of strangulation to be homicidal in nature, unless proved otherwise. Many types of ligature have been used for strangulation. Cases of strangulation with such weird materials as electrical cables are not unknown (reproduce fig. 143 on page 402 here). Strangulation is of several different types. The cases in which some kind of ligature (such as a necktie, scarf, dhoti, or even an electrical cable as just mentioned) is used, go by the name ligature strangulation. However the neck could be constricted by other means too. For instance, one could simply use hands to constrict the neck of his victim. These cases go by the name throttling or manual strangulation ( From Latin manus, hand ). Manual strangulation can leave tell-tale fingernail marks and scratches (from nails of the assailant) on the neck (reproduce fig. 147 on page 411 here) . There might be signs of struggle too, such as bruising of the face (reproduce fig. 139 on page 397 here). The face is generally congested (engorged with blood), but it might be pale (reproduce fig. 141 on page 398 here). Strangulation can also be effected by compressing the victim's neck against the assailant's forearm. This form is known as mugging. When a victim is attacked from the back without warning, and strangled by grasping his throat or throwing a ligature over the neck and tightening it quickly, it is known as garrotting. It can overpower and kill even a healthy robust male without any struggle. Loss of consciousness is so rapid that the assailant is able single-handed, to tie the ligature with one or more turns. Garrotting, as a mode of execution, is practiced in Spain and Turkey. In Spain, the prisoner is seated with his back to a post, to which he is firmly secured. A metal collar is then applied to the neck and tightened. The apparatus may include a spike which is forced into the nape of the neck during the execution. The bowstring is used in Turkey. In our country, especially in the Northern regions, a very weird form of strangulation is used. This is known as Bansdola ( doing away with a bamboo). In this form of strangulation, the neck is compressed between two sticks or hard objects, usually bamboos, one being placed across the throat in front and another behind. These are strongly fastened at one end and a rope is passed at the other to bring the two bamboos together. The unfortunate victim is thus strangled to death. Sometimes, the throat is pressed by means of a bamboo or lathi placed across the front of the neck, the murderer standing with a foot on each end of the bamboo or lathi, thus squeezing the victim. There is another method of strangulation known as the palmar strangulation (reproduce fig 137 on page 393 here). In this method, both palms are so pressed over the nose and mouth that the victim can not breathe. In cases of strangulation, abrasions and bruises round about the ligature mark are quite common. These injuries are produced by the assailant's nails, and even by the victim's own nails during the struggle to pry the ligature away from his neck. Many times, the pattern of the ligature material is reflected very faithfully on the neck. The weave of a rope for instance can come very accurately on the neck and many times a victim can be apprehended from that. In the adjoining figures (reproduce figures 133 and 134 on page 391 here), the weave of the ligature material gave away the criminal. The criminal strangulated a young boy with a plastic twine, with a characteristic weave. This weave was faithfully reproduced on the neck of the victim. When the accused was finally apprehended, a plastic twine was recovered from his which had exactly the same weave as was found on the neck of the boy. This helped to nab the criminal very easily. Differentiating suicidal from homicidal strangulation however can be a very tough affair. In the given case, I found at my wit's end to decide whether I was dealing with a case of suicide or homicide. The pattern certainly seemed similar to homicide. It was quite possible that Pramod came back later in the night to press his demand for sexual intercourse, and when Rajni resisted he strangulated her with her own scarf. It was quite possible for him to do that. Police investigations revealed that lately he was moving in bad company. Rajni's upturned skirt showing her underclothings pointed to the fact that Pramod might indeed have tried to molest her. However the two things that caught my attention were relatively undisturbed state of the room and the position of the knot in front of the neck. If the death was as result of homicide, there should have been a struggle between the two. Rajni might have shouted, but nobody heard her cries in the night. Furthermore one would expect the furniture and other things in the room to be in a violently disturbed state. But everything seemed to be in order, save for a flower pot which might have tipped because of the carelessness of Rajni. In suicidal cases, mostly the knot is in the front. Further the scarf was applied with five turns, and there was a final tying of the free ends with a half-knot. This is the hallmark of self-strangulation. A killer generally makes only one turn around the knot, and more often than not he would merely tighten the ligature without actually tying it. A person committing suicide by strangulation would have to tie the knots. If he merely tightened the noose, he could not strangulate himself. The reason is not hard to find. First of all he would tighten the noose with his muscular effort. Before dying he would fall unconscious. The moment he would fall unconscious, his muscles would relax. He would not be able to keep the ligature tight. The ligature would loosen up and he will start breathing again. Thus if a person wants to commit suicide by strangulation, he would have to tie a knot, so that the grip is not loosened. Another interesting point was the presence of scarf round the neck of Rajni. If Pramod had killed Rajni by strangulation, why hadn't he taken away the ligature material (the scarf) with him? It is very natural for a killer to take away the ligature material from the scene of crime. No criminal wants to leave behind any incriminating piece of evidence. All these pieces of evidence led me to conclude that Rajni had actually committed suicide by strangulating herself. She had been severely scolded by both her parents the previous night. She was in a state of great turmoil otherwise too. Her love-affair was not seen in the proper light by her parents and this had disturbed her a lot. All this caused her to take that drastic step on that night. The police had faith in my findings and released Pramod. A few months later, Rajni's father confided in me that he had indeed found a suicide note in Rajni's drawer, in which she had stated that she was taking her life because her parents refused to acknowledge her love-affair. He had destroyed that suicide note because he wanted Pramod to go behind bars. In his opinion, Pramod was morally and ethically responsible for his daughter's death. This confession confirmed my conclusions in that case. I was very satisfied on that day, that forensic science could help save the life of an innocent young man.

Forensic Science Fiction The mystery of the burnt bride When I was called at Sarita's house, she was already dead! To be sure I didn't expect anything better. They don't call forensic pathologists when people are still alive. The very fact they had called me, meant that someone had died. That's in our fate you see. Sometimes I take perverse pleasure in describing myself as one who is called in when all doctors have failed! As you can plainly see I do not have any wrong intentions, but the people tend to get misguided somehow. Whenever I say this, I get appreciative glances from everyone around. I frankly do not know what they make of my statement. Although I love forensic pathology, and would love to fiddle around with dead bodies, some forensic pathologists do want to shed off the image of the "doctors of the dead", and want to do some clinical work. Not that forensic medicine does not provide a scope for this. In fact there is enough scope for this. For instance there is a whole lot of toxicology, which we can dabble with. We can treat patients suffering from poisons, and can devise new treatments for them. But as I told you earlier, I would rather fiddle around with dead bodies. I love dissection you see. I want to see the intricacies of the human body, and no one can do that better than a forensic pathologist- or perhaps an anatomist. But Dr. Sunil Khanna, professor of forensic medicine in our department does not share my views. He is constantly seeking to excel in the clinical sciences. He has several patents to his credit, and his recent research concentrates on finding an effective treatment of some poisonings, especially poisonings by asphyxiants such as carbon monoxide. In fact he has contacted me several times with a request to start a joint project on this, but I have always declined it, as I have no aptitude for clinical work at all. But of course I am taking interest in his work and am aware of all the developments he is making. But coming back to our case. The moment I reached the spot, I was inundated with the usual questions. How had she died.... who killed her.... was her death suicidal or homicidal and so on and so forth. Let me tell you a few details about Sarita. She had married only a year ago. Her husband Ramesh was a petty clerk in a private company, but they were carrying on very well. Of course there was a dowry problem in the family in the beginning, but everything had settled by now, and apparently the couple was living together in good harmony. But the police would have nothing of this. They cooked up a theory that Sarita had been burnt by her in-laws. To be sure they were in a kind of bind. According to recent legal amendments, if a bride dies within 7 years of marriage, the case has to be registered as a murder. To the legally minded, I may add that the relevant section is 304B of Indian Penal Code, and it is entitled "Dowry Death". It was introduced as an amendment in 1986 when dowry death cases had increased to enormous proportions. In all such cases the presumption is that the husband or some of his relative has murdered the bride, and the onus of proving himself innocent lies on the husband or his relative. This is a lot tougher situation than the normal. Normally a person is deemed to be innocent and the prosecution has to prove otherwise. When the presumption is the other way round and you have to prove yourself innocent, things become lot tougher. This was the situation in which Ramesh and his family found themselves. It so happened that I personally knew Ramesh. I also knew that there had been some minor dowry problem in the house, but it had settled. In any case, I was not prepared to believe that he or any of his relatives could go to the extent of killing Sarita for bringing insufficient dowry. Of course there are people who do it, but Ramesh definitely was not among them. I talked to Ramesh in isolation, and took him in confidence. He told me that Sarita was rather a sentimental girl. She used to get depressed very soon. Recently the results of her MA exams had been declared and she had failed miserably. She used to remain too depressed after that and that was perhaps the reason she had burnt herself. Sounded like a fair reason to me. Sentimental people often do take their lives for petty reasons. I am personally aware of several youngsters who have committed suicide when they could not get admission to a medical or an engineering college. But there was a snag. Such people often leave a suicide note, and in Sarita's case, no suicide note had been found. I asked about this from Ramesh and he couldn't explain about it to me either. Well, I let it leave at that. Although suicide notes are usually found in suicidal deaths, they are not invariably found in all suicide cases. In any case, I made up my mind to defend Ramesh. When I examined the scene of death, it did not appear to be too disturbed to me. You see, things like turned up chairs, fallen flower pots, rumpled up bedsheets and so on. Such a set up often points to violent struggle having taken place soon before death, which in turn could strongly point to homicide. Since the scene was too "clean", I made up my mind that it indeed had to be taken as a case of suicide. Of course there are snags to this too. Murderers can set up a scene after having committed a murder. They can place everything back in order so that no one gets other ideas. But in such cases, I can often read it in murderer's faces. This is due to my long experience you see. I could see none of that in Ramesh or his family member's faces. But you would surely agree, I couldn't defend Ramesh in a court of law on hunches. I had to produce sound scientific evidence to be produced in court. But what was it going to be? I must admit, I had no idea of that at that point in time. Fortunately for me (and my case), the police had formed a rather weird theory of murder. They asserted that Sarita had first been killed by Ramesh and her family members by some means, such as gagging and then had been burnt by them, to give it the color of suicidal burning. Normally of course bride burnings occur when the bride is still alive. The traditional theory is that the mother-in-law comes surreptitiously from behind, pours kerosene on the hapless girl, and then someone lights a match. You might tend to believe that the police was foolish in building up this theory in the first place, but I wouldn't blame them. Sarita had died at about 11 am on Sunday, when every one is up and about. If they had developed a theory of traditional bride burning, some of their neighbors would of course had heard her cries, and other sounds of scuffle, but no one had heard such sounds. Indeed this was another factor which helped convince me towards a suicidal theory. Since no one had heard her cries, the police were a lot better off theorizing that Sarita was already dead when she was burnt. How could any forensic pathologist prove or disprove police theory? Gagging as we all know, doesn't leave any remarkable tell-tale signs of its own, especially when the gagging cloth has been removed from the mouth, and the body has been burnt subsequently. So an autopsy was not likely to prove with any conviction that the death had occurred because of gagging. In such circumstances, the only way the police theory could be proved was by showing that Sarita's was a case of post-mortem burning. On the contrary, if Ramesh and his family members' theory of suicide was correct, then Sarita's was a case of antemortem burning. So basically the question boiled down to this: Was this a case of antemortem or postmortem burning? I wouldn't bother you with details, but in a single line would tell you what these dreadful terms mean. An antemortem burning refers to a case of burning when the person was still alive, while postmortem burning refers to a case where the person was already dead when his body caught fire. While post-mortem burning almost certainly points to homicide, a case of ante-mortem burning could be anything- accidental, suicidal or homicidal- roughly in that order. There are some very clever ways to differentiate antemortem from postmortem burning. One of them - and one on which I rely heavily - is the finding of carboxyhemoglobin in the blood. During burning of any carbonaceous object, especially if the burning has taken place in closed surroundings, lot of carbon monoxide is produced. If the victim was alive at the time of burning he would be respiring and would invariably inhale some of the carbon monoxide (or CO for short). CO binds very strongly to hemoglobin to form carboxyhemoglobin. This bond is almost 200 times stronger than that made with oxygen. Because of this, carboxyhemoglobin does not "break up" even after death and can be detected by forensic pathologists. On the contrary, if the victim was already dead at the time of burning, he wouldn't be respiring and would thus not inhale any carbon monoxide. What does this piece of information lead us to? Simple. Do an analysis of the blood of the victim, and try to find out if there are appreciable amounts of carbon monoxide in his blood or not. By "appreciable amounts", I mean about 15-20% or more. People living in cities do tend to have small amounts of carbon monoxide in their blood anyway. With the vehicular pollution showing a steady rise - outdoing even our national economic growth rate- we couldn't expect anything better. Cities like Delhi would beat Hitler's gas chambers hands down any day. But I am straying away from the main line again. Let us come back to it. I brought Sarita's body to my mortuary, took some blood from her iliac vessels and got down to work straightaway. I almost certainly expected to find carboxyhemoglobin in her blood, but try hard as I would, I couldn't find even traces of it. I tried again, with more sophisticated methods, with spectrophotometer, with everything else I could lay my hands on, but try hard as I would, I couldn't find any carboxyhemoglobin. As you can imagine, this had grave repercussions for Ramesh and his family. Not finding carboxyhemoglobin in Sarita's blood could only mean one thing- that she was already dead at the time of burning. And that raised a very strong accusing finger towards Ramesh and his family. To tell you the truth, the finding did send me in a bout of confusion. I tried hard to explain the absence of carboxyhemoglobin but couldn't, except assuming that she was already dead at the time of burning. If I assumed her to be alive at the time of burning, there was no way I could explain the absence of carboxyhemoglobin. I was sitting confused in my anteroom thinking over the problem while the body lay in the mortuary. At five O' clock, the attendant came and informed me that he was leaving. I told that I would shut the department and asked him to leave. I came home and continued racking my brains over the problem. The next day was a public holiday and then there was a Sunday. After that a public holiday once again, made a continuous break of three days. It was only on the morning of the fourth day- the day when I was to go to the department once again- that I realized that I had left Sarita's body on the mortuary table itself! I should have transported the dead body to the cold room before leaving the mortuary. The mortuary attendants always do that. But on that Friday evening, I had stayed in the mortuary longer than usual; the mortuary attendant had left and I had promised him that I would do the needful before leaving the department. But I am not used to closing the mortuary. Coupled with this was the fact that I was quite puzzled that evening. That was the reason, I forgot to put back Sarita's dead body in the cold room. It was horrifying to even think of the consequences. The body would be badly putrefied now. In this summer heat, three days could play havoc with a dead body. At best, it would be a swollen, greenish-black putrid and badly smelling mass of organic matter. Of course things could be a lot worse. There could be maggots crawling all over the body for instance. What worried me was not the bad state of the body I would be confronted with, but that the putrefaction would blot out all medical evidence pointing to the mystery of her death. There was absolutely no hope of unearthing any more useful evidence now. With the worst fears in my mind, I opened the door of the mortuary, and expected a strong gush of revolting smell to hit my nose. I was mentally prepared for it. But nothing of that sort happened. I looked at the table where I had left Sarita's body, and was nonplussed to see the body there with almost no putrefactive change! Now I do believe in wonders, but not in wonders of this sort. I mean the ones, which defy logic and science. Sarita's body was lying there out in the open on the mortuary table and had not putrefied in the least! This was a wonder I could not believe. Something extraordinary had happened. But what could have happened? I started thinking about the problem, but couldn't come to an answer. Finally I took some of her muscle tissue and took it to Dr. S.K. Gupta, professor of biochemistry in our own college. Everybody knows he is a genius, and I personally believe he is made of Noble Prize stuff. In fact it is a mystery to me why he has not been able to get it till now. Well let us not digress from the main point. I submitted the tissue to him, and asked him to look for anything abnormal. I was a little surprised when two days later, he told me he had found abnormally high amounts of formaldehyde in the tissues. In fact so high was the amount that he asked me if I had preserved the body in formalin. I surely hadn't, but perhaps Jamman Singh, the attendant who left the mortuary on that Friday evening had done it before leaving. That was perhaps the reason, the body had not putrefied. I went to Jamman Singh and asked if he had sprinkled formalin over the dead body before leaving, but he informed me he hadn't done so. Why would he do so, when we have an excellent facility of a cold room? This confused me a lot more- and I had one more problem on my hands- to explain the presence of formalin in Sarita's body. Sarita surely hadn't ingested formalin. She had no access to it, and it couldn't have been given to her by Ramesh and his family members as a homicidal poison. Formalin has a strong smell and a very acrid taste, and because of these properties, it is a very poor homicidal poison. All homicidal poisons must be tasteless and odorless. If you tried to kill me by putting formalin in my milk, I would know somebody had put something in it and I wouldn't drink it. Of course I would do so, if you put arsenic trioxide in it, because it is colorless, odorless and tasteless. So if you wanted to kill me you would be much better off with arsenic trioxide than with formalin. The problem before me was how formalin reached her tissues. I thought for the problem for a few hours, and then a possible solution flashed in my brain, like the stroke of a lightning. Well, the train of my reasoning was this. There should have been carbon monoxide in Sarita's blood and muscles, but it wasn't there. And there should have been no formalin in her muscles, but it was there. Was it possible that carbon monoxide in her body had somehow converted to formaldehyde? Well, chemically it is not impossible. Formaldehyde is chemically HCHO, while carbon monoxide is CO. Plainly and simply, if CO can combine with water - which is quite abundant in human body- it can extract two hydrogen atoms from there and get converted to HCHO, while releasing the single oxygen atom free. Theoretically it is possible, but can it occur actually? I am no chemist, and surely I did not know the answer to this. To find the solution to this, I had to see no farther than my own home. My wife is a professor of chemistry (besides being a great cook, just in case you are reading it), and one fine day when I returned from college, the first thing I asked her was if that was possible. You can do that, she told me, but it is not simple. You have to have high temperatures and pressures and costly catalysts. Trickier is the situation in a human body- dead or living- where you have no catalysts, no high temperatures, no high pressures and so on. Why don't we have catalysts in the body, I asked her. Catalysts are not merely the domain of chemists. We do have our own catalysts. They are the various enzymes in the blood and in the body cells. And they can do seemingly impossible jobs. Like burning glucose so slowly and deftly that the body does not get burnt. Instead a fairly equable temperature is maintained. Is there any catalyst with the chemists which could even come anywhere near it? Of course she did not have to answer that, because she had gone to the kitchen to make a cup of tea for me, but her statement had already set me thinking. I couldn't kid myself with the weird notion, that an enzyme existed in human body which could convert carbon monoxide to formaldehyde, but what I came up with was the thought that perhaps Sarita was a mutant and such an enzyme existed in her body. Now why would such an enzyme creep up in the human body, you may ask. We all know that mutations do keep occurring in our bodies constantly, and they can lead to the formation of new proteins and enzymes. That is how evolution has occurred. Most mutations are of course deleterious to the body, but some are quite useful. Take for instance the enzyme which could convert carbon monoxide to formaldehyde in a body. Both are poisons, but the body finds it harder to deal with carbon monoxide, especially because it sticks so strongly to hemoglobin. On the contrary, formaldehyde is much easier for the body to tackle. This mutation could be quite helpful to Sarita if she had survived, and perhaps had been doing good to her all her life. It is a built in mechanism to protect you from the carbon monoxide of this increasingly polluting city. But we are again digressing from the main issue. The main point was whether or not Sarita had such an enzyme in her tissues. If I could positively prove that, only then could I simultaneous solve all my problems. In fact, the more I thought about it, the more I got convinced that this indeed was the solution. In science, the best solution is that which simultaneously solves several problems, however weird that may appear in the first instance. And once again I found myself in the lab of Dr. S.K. Gupta, but with a different request this time. He is an expert in cellular enzymes, and if there was one person on earth who could help me, it was he. I asked him to look at the muscle tissues once again and tell me if there was an unusual enzyme in it, especially one which had the property to convert carbon monoxide to formaldehyde. Now Dr. Gupta knows for sure that I am a little soft in the head, but he also knows that I can turn violent, if my genuine hunches are not attended to. They have to be either proved or disproved. So despite thinking that I was turning senile, he preferred to keep quite and got to work. He was in for a surprise. He did find an enzyme next day with exactly the same properties that I had predicted. It could effectively convert carbon monoxide to formaldehyde. He preferred to call it carbon monoxide reductase. He also told me that it was a completely unexpected finding- one that would stun the biochemical world. All my problems were solved now. I now knew that Sarita was a mutant. There was a unique enzyme in her blood, which converted the carbon monoxide of her blood in formalin, and that is why her body was so remarkably preserved. The presence of carbon monoxide in her blood meant that she was alive at the time of burning, and this in turn meant that she had committed suicide. One could of course argue that there was no carbon monoxide in her body from the beginning, but if we assumed that, we could not explain the presence of formaldehyde in her blood and muscles. So we had to assume that there was carbon monoxide in her blood to start with which got converted to formaldehyde. The court accepted my findings and conclusions and set Ramesh and his relatives free. But the biggest surprise was when I found that Dr. Khanna had lapped up my findings and was trying to make an useful drug aimed to treat carbon monoxide poisoning. He got Dr. Gupta to decode the chemical structure of this new enzyme and got him to make samples of it in his laboratory. He is trying to give injections of artificially prepared carbon monoxide reductase to patients of carbon monoxide poisonings and see if it helps them. The initial reports are encouraging. He has published several papers on this. Some have been written with me as a co-author. I wrote some on my own, and some with Dr. Gupta. I am giving you the references for some of the more interesting papers. Interested readers may look for details in the said references. 1. Khanna S.K., Aggrawal Anil. The role of carbon monoxide reductase in carbon monoxide poisonings. Journal of the American Medical Association 1998; 247: 1471-1475 2. Aggrawal Anil, Gupta S.K. The story of the discovery of Carbon monoxide reductase. Medical History 1999; 145: 365-377 I hope these papers would satisfy the curiosity of the more scientific minded people. But I must tell you that the thing that surprised me most was when Dr. Gupta was called by the European Academy of Biochemists to give them a series of lectures on the new enzyme, and Dr. Khanna got a call from the American Medical Association to tell them of his latest developments on the treatment of carbon monoxide poisoning. As for me, I was being burdened with more autopsies! Well, I asked for it!! *** This story was published in Spandan'97 (1996-97) , on Pages 53-57

Forensic Science Fiction

Forensic Science Fiction

< Back To Main Page. LinkedIn X (Twitter) Facebook Copy link Anil Aggrawal's Internet Journal of Forensic Medicine and Toxicology Volume 27 Number 2 ( July - December 2026) Contents Papers Domestic Violence Leading to Pediatric Burns: A Clinical Forensic Case From East Java, Indonesia Ibnu Chaldun ¹ , Ahmad Yudianto ² , Putu Bagus Dharma Permana ³ Forensic Medicine and Medicolegal Specialist Program, Faculty of Medicine, Universitas Airlangga, Surabaya, Indonesia Postgraduate Forensic Science Study Program, Faculty of Medicine, Universitas Airlangga, Surabaya Faculty of Medicine, Universitas Airlangga, Surabaya, Indonesia DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.15743408 Read

Forensic Science Fiction The Freak I was surprised. Extremely surprised. Never before had a patient come to me with such a complaint. I asked him again. "Are you sure, you keep moving back and forth in time? Just how do you know?" Rajiv coughed nervously. "All of a sudden sometimes, I feel dizzy. Then I feel as if I am falling in ordinary three dimensions. In an abyss. Rapidly. But it's not the height I loose. I find I have gone back in time. I see all sorts of things. Mughal splendor. Coming of the English people. Freedom struggle. Everything." "Are you sure you are not hallucinating? I am asking this because people of your species can control movement in time you see." "Yes, we four-dimensionals are not like you. Sure enough we can control movements in time just as you can in space. But I just don't know what's the trouble with me. I just can't control it. Look at this ancient coin. I brought it yesterday, when I tipped back in time." I looked carefully at the coin. A rare gold circlet from the reign of Akbar. There was no mistake about it. This four-dimensional sure enough meant business. He wasn't joking. In the last twenty years of my practice, I must have treated thousands of people - both three dimensionals as well as four-dimensionals. But never before had I seen such a patient. There wasn't much of a difference in the anatomy and physiology of the two major human species currently living on earth. Just a little difference here and a little there - so that the four dimensionals could adapt to their special needs and requirements. Four dimensionals were so called mainly because they had a special ability to move back and forth in time at will. We three dimensionals could do so only in three ordinary dimensions. How the four-dimensionals had come to live on earth is a long story. Centuries before, a space ship went from earth in search of intelligent life. After some years of departure, the radio contact between the space ship and the earth broke down and despite best efforts could not be re-established. God knows what happened to those humans, but when they came back some years ago, inhabitants on earth found they had acquired a new ability - to move back and forth in time at will. They couldn't tell anything as they didn't seem to know much. Exobiologists surmised that their forefathers- the ones that left the earth- must have been captured by a super intelligent race and they must have used them as guinea pigs for their genetic experiments. Most probably the ability to move back and forth in time had come as a result of massive genetic alteration by those super-intelligent beings. Anyway the fact was that their genetic makeup had been substantially altered - so much so that they couldn't interbreed with ordinary three-dimensionals. In spite of my best efforts, I couldn't treat Rajiv. He kept falling back and forth in time. The best I could do was to administer antihistaminics like Avomine so he wouldn't feel dizzy. But that wasn't much help as everybody would agree. Then one day I received the sad news that Rajiv had expired. I was shocked. Worst of all, I had to conduct a post-mortem examination and find the cause of death. I opened the body and as expected found petechial hemorrhages in all internal organs-liver, spleen, heart, brain, everywhere. Hemorrhages of the shape of pin-point. The cause of death was clear. He had been falling continuously over long periods. Small Hemorrhages kept on accumulating everywhere and their effect on the brain was devastating. Tried hard as I did, I couldn't locate any other abnormality. I started closing the body when suddenly I was gripped with a strange curiosity. Could I find the cause of his uncontrollable movements in time? I had more working space now. I had his entire dead body. I could examine all his organs in detail. I might hit upon some curious finding. Besieged with this strange curiosity, I ripped open the stitches and took out all the organs once again. Then I donned my researcher's hat and got down to work. Till late night I had made sections of all his major body organs and examined them under the microscope in great detail. I could find nothing. Tired, I decided to call it a day. I asked my assistant to wrap up the body in formalin and keep it in the cold room. I would have a last go tomorrow. And then I went to sleep. At 4 am I woke up with a start. My subconscious mind must have been working at the problem. That's why I had this ridiculous dream. I thought I had found out the cause of his strange abnormality. I couldn't contain my anxiety, and wanted to test the hypothesis right away. I took out my car and headed for the mortuary in the darkness. The roads, drowned in darkness at that time of the night appeared unusually spooky. At the mortuary, as expected, I found everything closed. The assistant had locked up the main gate, mortuary doors, cold rooms, everything- and had gone away to his house. I took out my duplicate set of keys and opened the mortuary. In the cold room, I opened catacomb number 13, the one where Rajiv was resting. Needless to say, my hands were trembling; perhaps both from fear and from the anxiety of making an unknown discovery. I took out the body myself and laid it out neatly at the table. The skull cap and brain matter were already removed. I looked at the base of skull- at the petrous part of the temporal bone. The one that forms the roof of the middle and inner ear. The mystery could be lying there, I told myself. Gradually and neatly I started chiselling away the temporal bone, so that none of the inner ear structures would be damaged. And then with great precision I took out the inner ear contents. The cochlea, the utricle, the saccule and the semicircular canals, along with vestibular nerves. I kept the whole complex under a simple hand lens and examined it - especially the semicircular canals. Suddenly I found myself trembling in excitement. My conjecture was correct. There were only three semicircular canals in his body, while actually there should have been four. The three semicircular canals are at right angles to each other, each representing a single dimension of space. Whenever someone tips in one or the other dimension, the otoliths inside the appropriate semicircular canal would start moving and activate the vestibular nerve which would send the information to the brain immediately. The brain would then send orders to proper muscles and joints to correct the body position. Those who had a disease of semicircular canals would not be able to stand erect properly. Since each semicircular canal represented one dimension, four dimensionals must have four canals, all perpendicular to each other. Three dimensionals like us, of course had only three canals. My reasoning was this. If Rajiv tipped slightly in the fourth dimension and didn't have the fourth semicircular canal representing the fourth dimension of time, the brain wouldn't get the necessary information and he would keep on falling in that dimension. Of course when he started seeing ancient scenario, he realized he was falling and could thus consciously control the fall. But by that time he would have gone quite far back in time and had to come forward in time on his own. This was the reason for his constant trippings in time. One last thing. How could one have four canals perpendicular to one another in ordinary three dimensions? One may wonder, where exactly I expected to see the fourth canal. Well, a four dimensional cube can be projected in three dimensions as a tesseract. What I expected to see was a tesseract of the semicircular canals, but there was none. There were just three semicircular canals. The finding has since been confirmed by dissection of other four-dimensionals. They all show their semicircular canals as a tesseract. They have four mutually perpendicular canals alright, but they show up as a tesseract, in ordinary three dimensions. This unexpected discovery gave me much satisfaction in itself. But the thing that surprised me most was to find my name in the Padma Shree winners of next year. *** This story was Published in July 1988 issue of 2001 (Science Today) on centerfold page under the title Time and Again

SCIENCE IN CRIME DETECTION-24 CLUES FROM PUTREFACTION I had a tremendous response for my article on abrasions, published in the Feb,1995 issue of Crime & Detective. However I keep receiving stray requests from interested readers to publish stories of their interest in our forthcoming issues. One of the most interesting letters I received this month is from Ashok Rawat of Sector-J, Rail Nagar, Lucknow, who has sent me an interesting clipping from the Times of India of Feb.13, 1995. I will narrate the story briefly for the benefit of our readers. One Ms Meera Juneja, a 47 year old single woman was living alone in Sector 11, Noida. She was the daughter of a former UN official. In December 1994, she reportedly told her parents that she was going to Kanpur to take her LLB examinations. Her father visited her Noida house on January 8,1995, but the door was locked and a milk packet was lying outside the door. Perhaps her father thought that she had left for Kanpur, so he returned. However when he visited Kanpur in February and checked up with his relatives, he found that she had not reached Kanpur. This worried him and he lodged a complaint with the police on February 6,1995. The police went to her house on February 10 and broke open the door. Inside, they found a highly decomposed body of Ms Juneja. The post mortem report said that she had been dead for more than one month. This eased the investigations of the police very much. Mr. Rawat now wants to know how the doctor could say that she had been dead for more than a month. This is an interesting topic and it reminded me of an interesting case I was involved in about 3 years back. I thought that in this instalment I must share that experience with my readers. After reading this true story, much of the mystery surrounding Ms Juneja's death will also become clear. But before I dwell on this story, I must thank my readers for sending me such interesting stories and clippings. And thanks Rawat very much, for sending this interesting clipping. Please keep sending me such clippings for the benefit of all our readers. On 29 July, 1992, the dead body of 67 year old Bankelal was found in a secluded spot outside the city. It was quite decomposed and putrefied. He was a millionaire but did not have any child. He used to live in his palatial house along with his 64 year old wife Ramadevi. She was healthy and not suffering from any disease. On 15th July, Bankelal left his city for Madras to finalize an important business deal. He had to return to his house on 28 July. He did not leave any forwarding address, as it was not of any use. Going away from his house was normal for him and his wife had become used to it. Some interesting events occurred after he left the house. On 22nd July, his wife Ramadevi suffered a massive heart attack and expired. So when Bankelal did not return on 28th there was no one to worry about him. His body was accidentally found the next day by some passers-by. When the police brought the body to me for post-mortem, the first and foremost thing they wanted to know from me was the time of his death. This is normally necessary in all cases of murder, but in this particular case this question assumed a highly significant role. I will explain that in a moment. But before I say anything I would like to add that this case is highly similar to the case of Ms. Juneja referred to earlier. In both cases the time of death was calculated using the putrefactive changes found in the dead body. Ramadevi had a greedy brother Bihari, who lived alone. He had had a tiff with his wife long back, and was now living separately from her. Bankelal also had two brothers. They were married and were living a decent life with their respective families. Since Bankelal had no child, and he had died intestate (without a will), the property which amounted to millions of Rupees should have gone to Banke's brothers. But Ramadevi's brother Bihari contacted the best lawyers and came up with an interesting legal point. If a person dies intestate, the first right of inheritance is of his wife and children. If the wife is already dead, and their are no children,(as was the case with Banke), then the right passes on to the next legal heirs which are the brothers and sisters of the deceased. In Banke's case, his wife Ramadevi was alive till 22nd July. Now if Banke had died before 22nd July, the property automatically passes to Ramadevi, even if she is unaware of his death. Banke's brothers are automatically cut off from his property. Now if Ramadevi dies, the property passes the her legal heirs, which is only Bihari. But the situation changes dramatically if Banke had died after 22nd. On 22nd Ramadevi died. Now suppose Banke died on 25th. What is the legal situation. On 25th the only living heirs of Banke are his two brothers. And thus the property should pass on to them. In this situation, Bihari does not get anything. Bihari's lawyers told him that he could cash in on this confusion. So Bihari gave an application in the court saying that the property be passed to him, because Banke had died before 22nd July. Of course there was no reason to assume that he had died before 22nd, but Bihari said it because this situation suited him. The police now wanted to know from me if I could solve this case. In this case I took the help of putrefactive changes which I found on Banke's body. Let me tell you briefly what putrefactive changes are. When a person dies, his body can no longer defend itself against the bacteria - both inside and outside his body. Our environment is full of millions of bacteria although we can not see them. If they could have their way, they would invade our body immediately. But the defence mechanisms of our body keep them at bay. After death they attack the body both from outside and within and cause it to deteriorate. By their actions on the body tissues they form a gas called hydrogen sulphide. When eggs get rotten, same gas is liberated. The peculiar smell of rotten eggs is due the hydrogen sulphide only. This gas interacts with the haemoglobin present within the red blood cells, and forms a greenish coloured compound sulphmethaemoglobin. This compound is greenish black in colour. Because of this the body assumes a greenish colour. The first part of body to become green is the right lower side of abdomen. This colour appears 12 to 24 hours after death. Thus if we see the greenish discolouration of the right lower side of the abdomen in a dead body, we can say that the person must have been dead for at least 12-24 hours. In the next 24 hours i.e. after 36 to 48 hours after death, the whole body turns greenish-black. Around the same time another peculiar change appears in the dead body. It is called marbling. In this change several parts of the body such as legs, arms, shoulders and chest show long tortuous greenish coloured streaks (reproduce fig 2.7 on page 60 here). These streaks are nothing but veins, which are stained by the sulpmethaemoglobin produced within the body. After death, the red blood cells break down, and haemoglobin from them is released. This haemoglobin combines with hydrogen sulphide gas and forms sulphmethaemoglobin as already explained. This compound then stains the vessels of the skin, in much the same way ink stains your hands. Thus the veins, which are normally invisible become visible as green streaks. Marbling begins in about 24 hours and is well pronounced in 36-48 hours. When I see pronounced marbling in a dead body, I can say that the person must have been dead for almost 36 to 48 hours! Another putrefactive change is the appearance of gases. When bacteria feed on body tissues, they release foul smelling gases. These gases collect beneath the tissues, and bloat the features of the dead person. The tongue may begin to protrude. The features may become so distorted that even close relatives find it hard to identify the dead body (reproduce fig. 2.8 on page 60 here). After about 36 hours, flies lay eggs around the natural orifices of the body such as nose, mouth, eyes, ears, anus and vagina. These places provide a safe nidus for the young ones of insects and they choose these places quite instinctively. In the next 24 hours, maggots come out of these eggs. These maggots look very much like miniature earthworms. Each maggot is of the size of a rice grain, and is seen wriggling leisurely. Thousands of such worms may be found wriggling all over the body. This is not a very pleasant sight, and most persons will begin to retch at such a sight. Only a forensic pathologist is well trained to stand such a ghastly sight. These maggots become pupa in the next 4-5 days, and in another 4-5 days, the pupa becomes the adult fly and flies away from the dead body. Thus we can roughly calculate the time of death from the appearance of these maggots. The following table will make the things a little bit clearer. 1. If we find eggs on the body the death could have been 36 hours before. 2. If we find maggots on the body, we add 24 hours (because maggots appear 24 hours after the eggs have been laid). Thus the time since death becomes 36+24=60 hours. This is about 22 d ays. In actual practice, we can never be so sure, so we take the time of death in such cases to be between 2 to 3 days. 3.If we find pupa (which looks like a grain of wheat), the death should have been about 6 days back. This is because maggots appear about 2 days after death, and become pupa in another 4 days. 4. If we find only the empty pupa shells, it means that pupa became the adult fly which escaped from the shell. This means that the death must have occurred about 10 days before. Three more changes help us determine the time since death. In about 3 days after death, the nails become loose. In 4 days teeth become loose in their sockets and in 5 days the brain matter becomes totally liquefied. Normally the brain matter is much like a jelly. In about 12 to 14 days, so much gases collect within the body, that the body cavities like abdomen burst open. This is called colliquative putrefaction. If the body has been thrown in river or sea where there are predators, they will feed upon the body. After sometime much of the body tissues disappear from the body. It is rather tricky to opine on the time of death in such cases but nevertheless, with experience, we can give a rough estimate of the time since death. In the photograph shown here, the person had been thrown in the sea for about 3 months (reproduce fig. 2.9 on page 61 here). As one can see, most of the body tissues have been devoured by the marine predators. Coming to our case. There was no colliquative putrefaction, so I could say with certainty that at least Banke had not been dead for 12 or more days. Since I did the post mortem on 30th July, I subtracted 12 days from that. This meant that Banke must have died after 18th July. Further, I found that many maggots were crawling around the anus of Bankelal. Thus clearly he had died more than 2 days before. Thus by noting just these two changes, I could say that Banke must have died between 18 and 28 July. There was no pupa on the body. Had I found a pupa on the body, I would have concluded that Banke had died about 6-7 days previously i.e. around 23-24 July. Thus clearly Banke had died after 23 July and Bihari's claim was wrong. Actually to refute Bihari's claim, only this much examination was necessary. But I could do better than that. Banke's teeth were loose, but his brain matter had not liquefied. Thus I could say that Banke had died 4-5 days before or between 25th and 26 July. This was a victory of Forensic medicine. The doctors in Ms Meera Juneja's case found out the time of death using these types of techniques only.