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Forensic Science Fiction

Forensic Toxicology THE FOLLOWING ARTICLE APPEARED IN THE JULY 1997 ISSUE THE POISON SLEUTHS POISONING BY VANADIUM -Dr. Anil Aggrawal "Good morning doctor. Oh, my God, what are you doing today? Oh well, today you are examining a middle aged man. What happened to him?" "Good morning Tarun. The name of this person is Ramashanker. For some days he is having some respiratory problem. He has difficulty in breathing, persistent cough, sneezing and sore throat. As you can see he is having red eyes too, which in medical parlance is known as conjunctivitis. He is also reporting some weakness, ringing in his ears and headache for a few days. His local doctor prescribed medicines for these ailments but apparently he didn't get any relief. He was then referred to a specialist, who conducted thorough tests on him and then came to the conclusion that he was perhaps exposed to some poison, and that's how this patient came to me." "And what are your conclusions doctor?" "Initially Ramashanker was thinking that he is suffering from some natural ailment, but when he heard about himself being possibly exposed to poison, he immediately named his employer as a possible suspect who might be trying to poison him. According to him, his employer was trying to fire him on several occasions but each time the Workers Union intervened and he could not be fired. But his employer was bent upon getting rid of him, and Ramashanker thought that he was probably trying to poison him as a last resort." "But how can he possibly poison him?" "The lunch of all the workers is distributed by the employer. It is part of the work conditions. Ramashanker thinks that somebody- most probably his employer- is mixing some poison in his food, perhaps through the help of some goons." "Do you think he is speaking the truth doctor?" "Frankly Tarun, I was not convinced by Ramashanker's assertion. But I wanted to examine him in some more detail before coming to any conclusion. When I saw his tongue, I found that it was greenish colored. This set my mind working and I asked where he was working. He answered as I had expected. He was working as a boiler cleaner in a power plant." "I do not understand what you are referring to. Please explain in some detail." "Tarun, I think no one is trying to poison him, yet he is suffering from poisoning- poisoning from a very exotic poison." "Doctor please stop speaking in riddles and tell me what poisoning is he suffering from." "Tarun, this person surely is suffering from Vanadium toxicity..." "Vanadium! That doesn't sound like a common poison to me. And how is he suffering from this poisoning when no one gave it to him?" "Tarun, Boiler cleaning is a highly hazardous profession in which workers are exposed to high levels of Vanadium. Before we proceed further, I think I should tell you a little about Vanadium." "Yes surely doctor. I would appreciate that. Although I am a good student of chemistry, I know very little about Vanadium, and I would like to know more about it before we discuss its toxicity." "Tarun, Vanadium is an element having an atomic weight 50.94 and atomic number 23. Its density is 6.11 at 18.10 C. Its melting point is about 18900 C and its boiling point is 33800 C. Elemental Vanadium is a corrosion resistant, hard, steel-grey solid. It was discovered in 1831 by the Swedish chemist Nils Sefstrom. The story of its discovery is very interesting. About 30 years before its actual discovery, in 1801, the Mexican chemist and mineralogist Andres Manuel del Rio was almost on the verge of discovering it, but he missed it by the breadth of thin hair, so to say. In that year he was studying the brown lead ores of Mexico. During his experiments he came across several colored compounds which he initially thought were the compounds of a hitherto unknown metal. He was right. These were the compounds of Vanadium, which are in fact so beautifully colored that today one of their major uses is in coloring pottery and porcelain. He even gave the new element a name "panchromium". "Pan" as you know is a Greek prefix meaning "all". Thus the element meant "all colors", which was quite an apt name because Vanadium compounds come almost in all colors. Later he changed the name to "erytronium" which means "red". But even after all this, del Rio could not proved his discovery scientifically, and thus couldn't get the credit for its discovery. Later the German chemist Friedrich Wohler also made a similar mistake." "Then how did sefstrom find the element?" "In 1830s, metallurgy was making its first steps in Sweden and plants were going up in different parts of the country. Quite curiously metallurgists found that iron smelted from some ores was brittle while that from some other ores had great plasticity, i.e. it was less brittle. On investigation it was found that the ores came from different deposits. It was quite obvious that there was some unknown substance, probably a new element, in some ores which was giving rise to this high plasticity of steel. Sefstrom was determined to isolate this new element and after strenuous efforts he was able to do just that. He and another Swedish chemist Jons Jakob Berzelius named this new element Vanadium, after a Swedish Goddess of love, Vanadis!" Interesting! But why this element should be named after a goddess of love?" "Berzelius was an established chemist and he was a very imaginative person. He described the story of Vanadium's discovery as an interesting allusion. He construed the earlier scientists such as del Rio and Wohler as prospective lovers who knocked at the door of a nubile young girl, but couldn't get her simply because they were not persistent enough and went away after knocking just once. Sefstrom was persistent enough to knock at the door of this girl continuously till the girl opened the door and thus was able to get that girl. Obviously the allusion of the girl was to this new metal, and of the knocking to the efforts made to extract that metal. Since Berzelius likened the new metal to a young nubile girl, he preferred to name it after the Swedish Goddess of love, Vanadis. It is said that after Sefstrom's success Wohler wrote to a friend,`I was a real ass to have overlooked the new element in the brown lead ore, and Berzelius was quite right when he laughed at me and described, not without irony, how I knocked at the door of Vanadis, so feebly, bashfully and haplessly!'" "Interesting indeed. How is Vanadium extracted from ores today?" "Tarun, Vanadium accounts for about 0.2% of earth's crust, which may not sound much but would sound significant when you consider that even this concentration is about 15 times more than that of lead and 2,000 times more than silver. But the world production of this metal is far less than these two metals. The world production of Vanadium was just 3 tons in 1907. It however increased to 18,000 tons in 1971 and 21,000 tons in 1975. The main producers are South Africa, US, erstwhile USSR and Finland. The reason why the production of this metal is far less than the other two metals is that it is fairly evenly spread in the crust unlike the other two metals which often occur in accumulations. Vanadium rarely occurs in accumulations, and ores containing just one percent of Vanadium are regarded as exceptionally rich. Even ores containing a mere 0.1% are taken for industrial processing. There are about 60 Vanadium minerals but mining is restricted to carnatite, which is a source of both uranium and Vanadium and vanadinite. Curiously, the meteorites that hit the earth contain two to three times more Vanadium than the earth's crust. Solar matter is also much richer in this element than our planet is. On earth, coal and oil have high quantities of Vanadium. Some coals may have up to 1% Vanadium, but the average is about 30 mg/kg, which is still quite high. Among the oils the highest concentrations of Vanadium are found in the Middle Eastern and Venezuelan oils which may contain up to 100-1400 mg/kg of Vanadium. Because of this, a significant source of Vanadium is the extraction from the furnace (boiler) ash of power plants which are fueled with residual oils. Because of this very same reason, persons engaged in boiler cleaning business are exposed to exceptionally high levels of Vanadium and they are quite prone to Vanadium toxicity. And this is probably the problem of Ramashanker" "Oh, I see. Before we go on to its toxicity, can you please tell me how such a toxic metal can possibly be used in any way?" "Tarun, despite Vanadium being toxic, it finds use in many industries. Its greatest use is in the production of special steels. You may be surprised to know that about 80% of the world production of Vanadium is used for this purpose. A small addition -just fraction of a percent- of Vanadium to steel makes it fine grained, very resilient, very strong and better fit to resist impact and bending. In fact, it has been described as a "vitamin" for steel. Interestingly both words begin with V. There is an interesting story regarding this use..." "Oh, I am a sucker for good scientific stories. Please tell me this story doctor." "The motor king Henry Ford is supposed to have said,`But for Vanadium, there would have been no automobile'. In 1905, he was present at a big motor racing event. Quite coincidentally a collision occurred. Ford went to up to the scene of the accident and picked up a fragment of one of the crashed cars. It was a French car and the fragment had belonged to its valve spindle. Ford was struck by its lightness and considerable hardness. Out of curiosity he sent it to a laboratory for analysis. The report came that this unusually steel contained Vanadium. Ford introduced this technology on a much larger scale in his own cars. And thus although this technology was known to the French before, it really came to be used on a mass scale only after Ford came to know about it. Today such important vehicle parts as the engine, valve springs, suspension springs, axles, shafts and gears are manufactured from steel laced with vanadium." Interesting. What are its other uses?" "As I said earlier, its salts are beautifully colored. The colors of these salts range from green, yellow, red and black to golden and hence they are used in porcelain and pottery industry to color them. Vanadium pentoxide and certain compounds of vanadium known as metavanadates are important catalysts in inorganic and organic chemical industries. They are used in sulfuric acid and plastic production. But only about 3% of all Vanadium is used as catalysts." "Does it have any medical use too?" "Vanadium does not appear to have any medical use. However dental caries incidence in children aged 7-11 years was reduced three times as compared to controls by local application of ammonium vanadate in glycerol. This is however an early Russian study and other workers have not been quite convinced by these results." "You said Vanadium is toxic. Can we ingest it through food too? And what about other sources of Vanadium?" "Wide variations occur in Vanadium levels in food. In the potato the reported concentrations range from about 1 mg/kg to 1.5 mg/kg. This could be due to differences in Vanadium concentrations in soil or to the bias of analytical methods or both. In cow's milk Vanadium was found at levels from about 0.2 mg/kg to 10 mg/kg. Meat concentrations are about 1 mg/kg. Vanadium is present in the air too. Its concentrations recorded in rural areas in the United Kingdom and Canada varied from 0.25 to 75 ng/m3. The concentrations in urban areas are higher- 60 to 300 ng/m3. There is marked seasonal variation, the mean for winter months being 6 times higher than for summer months. It has been estimated that about 1 mg of Vanadium could enter the respiratory tract per day if air concentrations are assumed to be about 50 ng/m3. The major sources of atmospheric emission are metallurgical works, followed by oil and coal burning. Fossil fuel combustion is the largest source of air pollution by Vanadium. You may recall that coal and oil are among the richest sources of Vanadium. The concentrations of Vanadium in water depend largely on geographical location and may range from about 0.2 to more than 100 mg/L. Levels of Vanadium in drinking water in India are not known but in the United States the average level has been found to be 4.3 mg/L. However typical values in drinking water appear to be about 1 mg/L. Concentrations in the soil range from about 5 to 140 mg/kg, and may reach high values when the soils are polluted by fly-ash. Then the values may shoot up to 400 mg/kg." "You said Ramashanker was suffering from Vanadium toxicity and you said that this occurred because he was working as a boiler cleaner. Are their other jobs too in which Vanadium can be absorbed?" "Tarun, industries where exposure to Vanadium may occur are Vanadium pentoxide production, Vanadium metal production, and production of Vanadium catalyzers. But as I said earlier, the most dangerous profession still is probably boiler cleaning. Very high levels in air may occur in boiler cleaning which may range from 17 to 60 mg/m3." "Doctor, what happens to Vanadium inside the body. Since it is not a normal constituent of the body, it should not have any use for it?" "Ingested Vanadium compounds are, in general, poorly absorbed. The absorption of soluble Vanadium compounds is just about 2%, i.e. if someone ingests 100 mg of a soluble Vanadium compound, only about 2 mg of it would be absorbed. Thus Vanadium salts, are very poor candidates for homicidal poison; they are simply not absorbed from the gastrointestinal tract. On the other hand Vanadium is a very important and interesting environmental poison because it is rapidly absorbed from the lungs! Skin is a minor route of absorption in man. Absorbed Vanadium accumulates in mainly in bone, and to some extent in the liver, muscle and kidney. The whole Vanadium content of a normal human weighing about 70 kg has been estimated to be between 17 and 43 mg. Interestingly although Vanadium is toxic, it is an essential element for chicks and rats, and its deficiency may result in their growth reduction and impairment of reproduction!" "You said that Ramashanker is suffering from Vanadium toxicity. How can you prove it in a court of law, if Ramashanker prefers to sue his employer for poisoning him intentionally?" "Tarun, his symptoms, especially his respiratory symptoms and his greenish tongue, coupled with the fact that he is working as a boiler cleaner are quite strong proofs in support of my contention. Yet there is an interesting test by which I can prove my theory. In Vanadium toxicity, the cystine content of fingernails is supposed to decrease. Cystine as you know is an amino acid. Thus determination of the cystine content of finger-nails is a useful diagnostic tool during a continuing exposure of Vanadium. I have already done that and I have indeed found the cystine levels in his fingernails to be reduced. Thus I shall have no difficulty in explaining to the court that Ramashanker is indeed suffering from Vanadium toxicity, and nobody is trying to poison him intentionally. Of course under the various industrial laws, he is entitled for compensation, should his toxicity make him an invalid. But I feel he should be shifted to some other work, so that his exposure to Vanadium is minimized and in time he would be alright. I would also be giving him a drug called BAL. It stands for British Anti Lewisite and is useful in the toxicity of several metals. I am sure that in time, he would be completely alright." "Thank you doctor for letting me know about such an interesting poison. What are you going to tell me next time?" "Tarun, next time I shall tell you about Methyl Bromide, which as you shall see is a very important poison. "

Forensic Toxicology THE FOLLOWING ARTICLE APPEARED IN THE JUNE 1999 ISSUE THE POISON SLEUTHS DEATH BY NITRIC ACID -Dr. Anil Aggrawal "Good morning doctor. Oh, my God, what are you doing today? You have the dead body of a middle aged man today. He has these strange yellowish stains over his face and chest. What has happened to him? Please tell me." "Good morning Tarun. The name of this middle aged man is Radhey Shyam, and he was living alone in this house for the last five years. His dead body has been found today morning from his house. His wife and son died long ago, and since then he is living in a very depressed state of mind. He had become alcoholic and had taken to gambling too. He had taken lot of loans from various sources. It is said that from one person Munna, he took as much as one lakh of rupees. Munna was actually a professional money lender and he used to give money at a very exorbitant rate of interest..." "Oh, I see. But what has all this to do with his death?" "I am coming to that Tarun. Munna was pressing Radhey Shyam for his money for quite some time. Last week Munna had visited Radhey Shyam's house, along with some of his goons for his money, and when Radhey expressed his inability to return the money for about six more months, Munna had threatened him with grave consequences." "So Munna has killed Radhey for retaliation?" "This is what the police thinks. Actually Munna had visited Radhey's house yesterday night too, and had threatened him with grave consequences once again. Today morning they have found the dead body of Radhey. So it is very natural to assume that Munna and his goons have killed Radhey." "What does Munna say?" "The police has arrested him. He looks terrified. He is swearing that he has nothing to do with this killing. He does admit that he had visited Radhey yesterday night, and that he indeed was with two of his goons. He also admits that he had threatened Radhey with grave consequences, but he swears he gave those threats merely to terrify Radhey into returning his money as soon as possible. He never intended to kill Radhey. He has also come out with an interesting argument. He says that he would not have got his money anyway by killing Radhey. So killing Radhey was not in his interest anyway." "Sounds like a valid argument. What do you think doctor?" "Tarun, as you know, I deal every case from a scientific angle. Are you looking at the yellowish stains over his face and chest and over his clothes?" "Yeah, they are very prominent. In fact that is the first thing I noticed, when I came here." "I have looked at his teeth and tongue too. Even they are stained yellow. Come, you also have a look" "Yes, indeed. But what are you trying to arrive at?" "Tarun, it seems to me, that Radhey has died because of Nitric Acid" "Nitric Acid? Never heard of this poison being used to kill anyone." "Nitric acid is not a homicidal poison. It can not be given homicidally to anyone, because it has such a pungent taste. It is in fact a suicidal poison." "Looks like we are on to another of your rare and exotic poisons. Doctor please tell me about nitric acid from the beginning." "Tarun, Nitric acid is a colorless or yellow fuming liquid with an acrid odour. It is a powerful oxidizing agent and reacts with organic matter such as with proteins to produce trinitrophenol or picric acid with the liberation of nitrogen monoxide. This is known as xanthoproteic reaction. Organic matter is thus turned yellow. Stains of this acid on clothing are also yellow, which is a distinctive feature of poisoning by nitric acid. In fact this is how I first suspected that this could be nitric acid poisoning." "Oh, I see. Can you tell me, what are the symptoms a person experiences when he consumes nitric acid?" "Sure. The person gets eructations and abdominal distension. Actually this symptom is also seen with other acids such as sulphuric acid, but eructations and abdominal distension are more severe in nitric acid than with sulphuric acid, because with nitric acid more gas is formed. Then, as you know by now, there is yellowish staining of the teeth as well as of the skin around the mouth, cheeks, and neck, which is very characteristic. Yellow stains may also be found on hands, forearms, and the chest because of splashing. In severe cases, the stomach may perforate, but this is unusual." "Doctor, what is the usual fatal dose of nitric acid?" "It is around 10-15 ml. Actually one tablespoonful contains about 5 ml of liquid. So about two to three table spoonfuls of nitric acid are enough to kill a person." "And what is the usual fatal period?" "It is around 18-24 hours" "How can a person obtain nitric acid to kill himself?" "Tarun, nitric acid is widely used in the art and manufacturing industry. It is used for cleansing nickel ornaments and separating gold from other metals. It is also used in the preparation of gun cotton, nitroglycerin, picric acid, and colouring matters. Because of its wide use in industry, and even in domestic affairs, it is commonly available in the market. And because of its easy availability, suicidal and accidental poisoning is quite likely." "Can a person commit murder with nitric acid?" "Majority of cases of poisoning by nitric acid are either suicidal or accidental. Homicide with nitric acid is extremely difficult, and perhaps even impossible. Because of the corrosive nature of the acid, it can not be given to an unsuspecting individual, who would immediately discard it on tasting. However forcible administration of this acid in drunk patients has been reported. A forensic expert by the name of Christison describes a case where nitric acid was forcibly poured down the throat of a woman when she was drunk. Nitric acid has also been used in vitriolage, although the use of sulphuric acid is more common for this purpose." "Excuse me doctor, you have used a new word. I am not quite familiar with this. What is vitriolage?" "Tarun, vitriolage is intentional throwing of a corrosive substance over the face of an enemy. Often the corrosive substance such as sulphuric or nitric acid is filled up in an old used bulb, and this bulb is then thrown over the face of the victim. A person who commits vitriolage generally does not intend to kill his victim. He merely wants to disfigure him or her. When this bulb smashes on the victim's face, the corrosive substance is released and corrodes the face of the individual. This method is usually employed by disgruntled youths to disfigure the face of beautiful girls who have spurned their love offers." "Oh, that is really sad. Now in the current case of Radhey, how did you reach the conclusion that he had died of nitric acid poisoning?" "By his peculiar post-mortem findings. I have already talked to you about his yellowish stains. These yellowish stains have to be differentiated from those of the iodine stains, because they can cause similar stains. However if ammonia or some other alkali is applied to the stains, the ones due to nitric acid deepen in colour to become orange, whereas those by iodine are decolorized. I did this test in this case, and found that these stains were indeed caused by nitric acid only. In addition, I found that his stomach was perforated. This can only happen if the acid has corroded the stomach wall. But I did not stop at that. I took some material from his stomach and chemically tested it in my lab. I have confirmed chemically that the substance which Radhey ingested was indeed nitric acid. Subsequent to this, I asked the police to search his house and look for some suspicious looking half filled bottle. And sure enough they found a bottle of nitric acid in his almirah which was half filled. Now I will tell you what must have happened. Munna indeed visited Radhey's house yesterday along with his goons, and he also threatened Radhey. But he did not kill him. After Munna had left, Radhey got depressed. He anyway was living alone and no meaning to life was left to him. He wanted to commit suicide and the only thing available to him was nitric acid. He consumed this acid and died. Come let us tell the police that Munna has not killed Radhey. He has actually committed suicide." "Very clever indeed. This was a most interesting discussion doctor. Without your masterly deduction, police could have unnecessarily went on harassing Munna. Everyone might have thought, it was a case of killing by Radhey. Tell me what are you going to tell me the next time?" "Tarun, next time, I would tell you about a very interesting poison. It is oxalic acid. "

Forensic Science Fiction The mystery of the dead infant I had just got up from the bed. It was a nice Sunday morning, and lazily I asked my wife to prepare a cup of coffee for me. Tarun, my son brought me the newspaper, and just when I sank further deep in my bed anticipating a nice sunny Sunday morning, with a cup of coffee in one hand, and the newspaper in the other, the telephone bell rang. “Who is it?”, I asked somewhat impatiently. “Sir, I am the Sub divisional Magistrate of this hill district located about 200 km from your place. We have a very tricky case on our hands. Could you come immediately please?” and then without waiting for my answer, added. “I am sending the vehicle. It is a Fiat car DL 4C A 6600. It will be there in about half an hour. Please be ready with your post-mortem kit.” “Hell”, I thought, “Why in the world did I chose forensic medicine as a career?” To be honest with you, I chose this career because I love the dead. But probably a minor reason was that by choosing it, I would not be getting any emergency calls. The dead hardly call you on Sunday mornings. And yet, here I was getting calls almost all Sundays. Well, that’s life. I was already quite worked up by the time my wife brought me coffee. I quickly gulped it down, and became ready with my post-mortem kit. The car soon arrived at my house, and in about 6 hours took me away to a nice sleepy little hamlet tucked away in the lap of some very huge mountains. The air was so fresh and invigorating, I was glad I came there. The SDM was waiting for me at the office. “Thank you doctor for coming. It’s already 3 pm. Let us first have some lunch and then we would talk”, and quickly he took me inside. He made some motions with his hands to his subordinates and they all swung in action. Soon trays, plates, cups with nice little eatables started pouring in. What he told me over the lunch was this. Sushila was a 27 year old woman married to Dinesh, and both of them had a happy life. They lived about 5 km from where we were sitting. They had a neighbor called Sitaram, with whom they were having a land dispute for almost one generation now. Their (Dinesh and Sitaram’s) fathers had died while the litigation was on, and now Dinesh and Sitaram were getting on with the litigation. Sitaram had a bad reputation in the area, and he had threatened Dinesh many times with dire consequences if he did not relinquish his claim on that controversial piece of land. However since about one year, the two had buried the hatchet, and were meeting each other regularly at least on social occasions such as Diwali, Holi, marriages etc. The case of course was going on in the court as usual. This is not a very unusual occurrence in our country. Land disputes do go on, while people mix together in social occasions. About a week back Sushila gave birth to her first son in a local hospital. When she started having labor pains - at about 4 pm - she was taken to the local hospital, and admitted there. Soon the word spread among the locality and many people gathered at the hospital. Many of them came with sweets. Dinesh’s mother and Sushila’s parents were there to receive them. Sitaram also came to congratulate the young couple. After exchanging some pleasantries most of them melted away. By the time the baby was born - at about 3 am the next day- only Dinesh, Sushila’s father and Sitaram were outside the labor room. All of them distinctly heard the baby’s cries. Dinesh and Sushila’s father became ecstatic and ran outside to phone their friends. Only Sitaram remained there. When they came back after fifteen minutes after telephoning all the relatives they found Sitaram talking with the doctor in somber tones. They were told that the child had been born dead! They could not believe their ears. They had heard the child’s cries with their own ears. This definitely meant that the child had been born alive. How could the doctor play this fast one on them by saying that he had been born dead. Definitely there was something black at the bottom. When the police made enquiries, both Dinesh and Sushila’s father asserted that they had heard the child’s cries standing outside the labor room. Sitaram was also standing along with them, but when he was asked about it, he said he hadn’t heard any such cries, and may be Dinesh and his father-in-law were mistaken. Sometimes you do listen what you want to listen. This now became a two versus one story, and naturally a lot of doubt started whether the baby had actually cried or not. This was important, because if the baby had cried he had been born alive, and somebody - most probably Sitaram - had killed him. And if the baby had not cried, then it was possible that he was a case of a still born child. Many fingers started raising at Sitaram. He did have an old rivalry with Dinesh, and he had a strong motive to harm him. He was alone for as much as 15 minutes outside the delivery room, and the nurse told to the police that for five minutes after the baby was born, there was no one in the delivery room, as they had to rush to the next room for an emergency case. In these five minutes, it was quite easy for Sitaram to enter the room and -say- strangle the child. Sushila was of course too exhausted to note anything. She had probably passed out for some time after delivery. The doctor and nurse were questioned. The doctor was a young man, who had passed his MBBS only a year back, and had taken up this job to pass his time while he studied for his post-graduate entrance examination. The nurse was also very young and inexperienced. They had probably already sensed some medico legal problems and had become very defensive. Both of them asserted that the baby was born dead. As you can very well understand, things had become very complicated by now with some saying the baby was born alive and others saying he was born dead. The only way to solve this puzzle was to order an autopsy. Since in that little hamlet no expert forensic expert was available, the autopsy was entrusted to a young pediatrician named Dr. Harish. I looked at the autopsy report. It was a fairly nice job, considering it was done by a pediatrician. I certainly could not do a pediatric job as nicely as he had done this forensic job being a pediatrician. He had conducted the hydrostatic test and had found it to be positive and in addition had found several semilunar marks around the baby’s neck. As we all know these semilunar marks indicate nail marks and often form on the neck in cases of throttling or manual strangulation. As regards hydrostatic test, I am sure all of us know about it, but just for recapitulation, it is an interesting test which tells us - the forensic pathologists- whether a baby was born alive or not. The premise is that if the baby was born alive, he would have respired - at least once - and this would fill his lungs with air, making their specific gravity less than that of water. If on the other hand, the baby was born dead, he would not have respired and his lungs’ specific gravity would remain more than that of water. So what one does in such cases is just to dissect out the lungs and put them in water. If the lungs float, the test is positive - meaning thereby that the infant was born alive - and if the lungs sink, the test is negative implicating the opposite conclusion. To be sure, the actual test is much more complicated than this, but this is the gist. There are some problems with the test, with many pathologists claiming that it is not an infallible test, but we will leave aside those controversies for the time being. As I told you, the doctor had made a fairly thorough post-mortem. His conclusions were summed up like this: “The baby had been born alive, and survived probably five minutes. The cause of death was asphyxia due to manual strangulation.” This raised a very strong finger of suspicion at SitaRam, and the police arrested him. The basis of arrest was of course the implicating post-mortem report. But SitaRam was a well-connected man. He contacted someone high up in the political hierarchy, and got an order for a repeat post-mortem. And this post-mortem had to be done by a forensic expert of some standing. That is how I came into this picture. My job was of course to conduct the autopsy again, and find out if the earlier findings by Dr. Harish were alright. I must say, this was not an enviable task. First autopsy destroys many organs, and disturbs their natural relationships with one another. A repeat autopsy is at least ten times as difficult as the first one, yet the SDM had reposed his faith in me, and I had to live up to my reputation. The first thing I did was to talk to SitaRam at length. Now after remaining in this specialty for almost 25 years now, I have developed a knack of sensing when a person is speaking the truth. I don’t know how I do it, but I can give you some pointers. When you question a suspect, look straight in his eyes. If his eyes flinch, he might be speaking a lie - otherwise he would look straight at you too. Look at his fingers, and observe any fine tremors there. Look at his Adam’s apple, while he is speaking and look for the very faint quivering there. Touch his hands and see if he has just those tiny traces of sweat on his hands. These little things tell me if the person is speaking the truth. An accomplished liar can consciously control his voluntary nervous system, but can’t control his sympathetics and parasympathetics, and they usually give him away. Above all there is this sixth sense which has developed in me, which tells me if the person is speaking the truth. After talking to Sitaram for about an hour, I was convinced he was not the murderer. He was definitely at loggerheads with Dinesh and Sushila, but he would not go to the extent of killing their new born son. Either the infant had been born dead in the first place, or he had been killed by someone other than Sitaram. There were some difficulties though. First of all, courts don’t act on hunches. They need real proof. I could tell them, I had a knack of knowing a liar, but they would still want scientific proof, and I had to get one. When Dinesh and his father-in-law left the hospital to phone their relatives, their was no one beside the labor room except Sita Ram, so there was no question of someone else killing the new born infant. So I was left with just one option; that the infant was born dead. But what was I to make of the positive hydrostatic test? And furthermore how was going to explain the tell-tale semilunar nail marks on the neck of the infant. That was the main question. Without waiting further, I demanded to see the infant’s body. It was lying in the cold room of the mortuary, and was brought out for me. I looked at him. He was a nice sweet little boy. It was heart-rending to see his chest and abdomen all sewed up (after the first autopsy). I closely examined the so-called nail marks on his neck, and I must say, they were looking quite similar to the usual nail marks that we see day in and day out in cases of manual strangulation. There were no other injuries on the infant’s body. I opened the stitches and examined the internal organs closely. I looked at his lungs, which definitely seemed inflated. I conducted the hydrostatic test again, and it was undoubtedly positive. In addition I conducted some additional tests which the previous doctor had not done. For instance, I also conducted the so-called Wreden’s test (sometimes wrongly called as "Wredin's test"). First suggested by R. Wreden in 1868 (in Otitis media neonatorum), this is a rather dubious test, yet in a case of second post-mortem, it was strongly indicated. If not for anything else, then just for confirmation. For the purposes of recapitulation again, this test relies on the fact that a fetus’s middle ear contains jelly like material till he resides in the womb. When he is born and takes a deep breath, his Eustachian tubes open and air enters through them to the middle ear. So if you find a small bubble in the middle ear, you can be quite sure, the baby was born alive. On the contrary if you find just jelly like material in the middle ear, the baby was most probably born dead. Again this is a highly controversial test, and no pathologist worth his salt performs this test these days. But as I told you earlier, this was a case, where we were leaving no stones unturned. [More information on Wreden's test for the more scientific minded amongst you. In 1873 - five years after the initial report by Wreden - another scientist Wendt reported in Arch. f. Heilkunde that if the infant respired when he was immersed within the amniotic fluid, one could detect even amniotic fluid in the middle ear of such babies. Based on the researches of these two scientists, the test is often known as Wreden-Wendt test, or Wreden-Wendt tympanic cavity test. One may also want to go through the following paper for the details of the test:Jobba G, Sandor T. (1971) Medicolegal evaluation of the Wreden-Wendt tympanic cavity test [Article in German]. Z Rechtsmed 69(3):173-6 Or you may want to click on the following link http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=5170412&dopt=Abstract ]. Wreden’s test also came positive and I was quite depressed. The baby had indeed been born alive. So depressed was I that I came back to my hotel, and tried to sleep. Tried hard as I would, I couldn’t sleep. After sometime, I went out for a walk in the mountain roads. The fresh air invigorated me. After about one hour of aimless stroll, I came back and slept. Probably I kept dreaming of the case. I know this because at 4 am, I suddenly got up. I had probably dreamt something strange. I kept sitting for some time, and then I remembered there was a phenomenon called vagitus vaginalis, which is such a rare phenomenon, that most people take it as a myth. Here we might be dealing with a case of vagitus vaginalis. You might be wondering what this strange term means. Let me explain. In the nineteenth century, there were a number of reports by reputed obstetricians, which stated that a fetus can in fact respire while he is still in the vaginal canal. He can emit a cry in the vaginal canal, while he is being born! This would be heard as a muffled cry by people standing close by, and anyone would swear he had heard the infant cry. There is a still stranger phenomenon known as vagitus uterinus, in which the baby cries while he is still higher up - in the uterus. Well here we probably had a case either of vagitus vaginalis or vagitus uterinus. These babies who utter such a cry either inside the vagina or uterus may be born alive or dead. If born alive, naturally no problem would occur, but if such babies were born dead, they could land the doctor in severe trouble. Relatives standing outside the labor room would invariably have heard the cry and they would hold the doctor responsible for the death of the baby. They would keep asserting the baby was born alive, and died subsequently due to doctor’s negligence. I personally know of many such cases, in which doctors had to face the patients’ ire. The more I thought about it, the more I got convinced that I could convince any court of law about its possibility. I had xerox copies of all those reports of vagitus vaginalis and vagitus uterinus. And if so many reputed obstetricians had seen this phenomenon, certainly this phenomenon was possible in our case too. But what indeed remained to be explained were the strange looking semilunar marks on the baby’s neck. They did look like nail marks, indicating someone had tried to kill him. If he was born dead, why anyone in the world would try to kill him. I could not solve this problem despite thinking deeply about it. Finally I got tired and slept again. Next day I took out the body of the infant again from the cold room and looked closely at his neck. There were these unmistakable nail marks. There was no doubt about that. I was quite nonplussed. Without having the faintest idea of what I was doing, I began examining his abdominal contents. Suddenly I was gripped with excitement. When I looked near the area of his liver, I found that the baby had not just one, but two ligamentum teres. The previous doctor had probably missed this strange finding. And I wouldn’t blame him for that, for he was so inexperienced. Now before you throw up your arms in despair, let me tell you a little bit about this strange structure. In a fetus, originally there are two umbilical veins which take oxygenated blood from the placenta to the fetus. After sometime, the right umbilical vein disintegrates; only the left persists. After birth the baby starts respiring and this umbilical vein becomes quite redundant. Nature has a way of dealing with this new situation. This umbilical vein obliterates and becomes a ligament like structure in about 3-5 days after birth. This ligament like structure is called ligamentum teres. This is a very useful marker for forensic pathologists. By seeing this structure, they can tell how long the child survived after being born. For instance if we see only the umbilical vein, we can say, that the child died within 3-5 days of being born, but if we see a ligament in its place we would be quite sure that the child survived at least 3 days after being born - probably more. Does that meant, the little child survived 3 days after birth? Not in the least. The child’s death immediately after death was so well documented that there was not an iota of doubt about it. It was probably a case of very early disintegration. Such cases do occur once in a while. But what surprised me no end was that he was showing not just one, but two ligamentum teres. To my feeble mind, the only implication was that his right umbilical vein had not obliterated early in his uterine life. It had persisted till birth and only after that it obliterated. Well, I am no anatomist, and did not want to make any further conjectures on it. So I phoned, one of the best anatomists I know of - Professor J.M. Kaul of our own anatomy department. What she told me over the phone was quite surprising to me. She said that in some lower animals, the right umbilical vein does persist till birth. She was not aware of any case where it was seen in humans, but if I had seen one this must be a case of atavism. You might accuse me of throwing one technical term after other, but I can’t help it. I was taking things as they were coming to me. Thankfully I did know something about atavism, so I did not have to bother her more for that. I thanked her profusely and rushed back to mortuary. Atavism is a technical term which comes from the Latin at, meaning above or beyond and avus, meaning a grandfather. Thus Atavism literally means “above a grandfather”. It refers to a reversion or throw-back of an inherited characteristic which has skipped a number of successive generations. To the best of my knowledge, the presence of a cervical rib in a human being is a good example of atavism. Evolutionarily there has been a reduction in the number of ribs, especially in the region of our pectoral and pelvic girdle (to allow for greater freedom of movement), but every once a while we see persons with cervical ribs. These people are very good living examples of atavism. Well, what about this boy. I dissected his neck, and was amazed to see not just one, but two cervical ribs - both on sixth and seventh cervical vertebra. Are you getting the picture now? This boy was showing several primitive characteristics. In other words, he showed many atavistic characteristics. Probably my salvation lay in him showing atavism. What about neck scales? Lower animals like snakes and crocodiles show scales on their necks, while humans do not. Was it possible that his little boy showed another atavistic character in his neck? Was it possible that those little semilunar marks on his neck were not nail marks, but very primitive scales? I could not rule the possibility out, as this boy was showing so many of the atavistic characters. I am no biologist, and I contacted a very prominent biologist - Dr. Lalji Singh of Hyderabad. He told me to send over some of the skin samples from those semilunar marks, so that he could put them to tests. I did exactly that. He examined them in great detail and his reports really astounded me - well! Not so much after what I had been seeing all throughout. Those semilunar marks were not nail marks at all. They were very tiny scales which were probably again a relic from the past. He had histological reports with him to confirm his findings. Those semilunar marks did not show the structure of skin, but that of scales! So this little child indeed showed a number of atavistic characters. I will now tell you what exactly happened. This child cried probably in the vagina, because of which his hydrostatic test - and other tests depending on respiration - came positive. In fact he died somewhere within the birth canal probably because of fetal distress. In addition, he showed a number of atavistic characters, one of which was tiny scales over his neck, which looked exactly like nail marks. These marks stumped not only the young inexperienced Dr. Harish, but even me. I was very happy when the court accepted my findings, and released SitaRam. He came to me and thanked me no end. I was happy I could do justice to that person. Meanwhile, I am told, Dr. Kaul has written a very good paper on atavism, and is going to Berlin to deliver it there. As for Dr. LaljiSingh, he is trying to find the incidence of atavism in Indian children, taking that child as an example. As for me, I am burdened with more dead bodies and more post-mortems. Well, who cares. The dead are after all ones whom I love most!

< Back To Main Page. LinkedIn X (Twitter) Facebook Copy link Anil Aggrawal's Internet Journal of Forensic Medicine and Toxicology Volume 27 Number 1 ( January - June 2026) Contents Papers Posttraumatic Ischemic Brain Stroke After Sharp Neck Injury: A Case Report Based on Autopsy Ivan Tsranchev Pavel Timonov Stela Yancheva Kristina Hadzhieva Teodora Gudelova Mirena Sotirova Antoaneta Fasova Elizabet Dzhambazova Petar Uchikov 1. Medical University of Plovdiv, Republic of Bulgaria, Europe DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.15743623 Read Can Lip Prints Change Overnight?: A Study of Lip Print Stability Across Day and Night as a Forensic Identification Tool Noor Hazfalinda Hamzah Khairul Osman Naakshectra Nadarajan Tham Jia Ci Nurhanis Khairuddin Muhammad Izhan Sabri Atikah Mohd Nasir Nur Mahiza Md Isa ¹⁻⁷ Forensic Science Program, Centre Diagnostic, Therapeutic and Investigative Studies (CODTIS), Faculty of Health Sciences, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia Bangi, Selangor D.E. , Malaysia ⁸ Department of Veterinary Pathology & Microbiology, Faculty of Medical Veterinary, Universiti Putra Malaysia, Serdang, Selangor D.E. , Malaysia DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.15743496 Read

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Forensic Toxicology THE FOLLOWING ARTICLE APPEARED IN THE FEBRUARY 1997 ISSUE THE POISON SLEUTHS ARSENIC - THE KING OF POISONS -Dr. Anil Aggrawal "Good morning doctor. Oh, my God, what are you doing with this dead body? He seems to have a terrible rash all over his body. Would you explain me what he died of?" "Good morning Tarun. This man is Radheyshyam who is a 56 year old man. His first wife died about 5 years back, and soon after he married again. He was complaining of loose motions and vomiting off an on for the last two years. The doctors suspected he was suffering from gastroenteritis, which as you know is an inflammation of the stomach and intestines. But what they could not find out was the cause of this inflammation. Consequently he was being given only the symptomatic treatment. Finally he succumbed yesterday to his illness." "Then why is he here? Why haven't his relatives taken him for cremation. You are a forensic pathologist, and if I understand it correctly, you only look after cases with legal implications. What possible legal implication could be involved in this case." "Y ou are right Tarun. I deal only with legal cases. But yesterday, the brother of this person, Harishyam has alleged that his brother's relations with his new wife Shanti were not good. He suspects some foul play in his death. Many times he saw her mixing some whitish powder in his food. When he enquired, she would say it was some medicine she had brought from the local doctor for his illness. Immediately after his brother's death he reported the matter to the police. In response to his complaint, the police has registered a case against Shanti, and has submitted the body to me for post-mortem. Now my job is to find out if he really died of gastroenteritis." "Doctor, it seems very confusing. Just now you said that he did die of gastroenteritis. His symptoms were that of gastroenteritis, and he was getting treatment for it. Then what else could he die of?" "On the face of it, it does appear that he died of gastroenteritis, but there could be foul play as well. You yourself remarked over the rash he has all over the body. Well, in gastroenteritis one does not get rash over the body." "Then he might be having some concomitant skin disease, isn't it?" "Could be. But a more likely explanation could be arsenic poisoning, especially as Harishyam repeatedly saw Shanti mixing some white powder in his brother's food." "You mean Shanti was giving him arsenic, because of which he developed gastro-enteritis like symptoms and also the rash?" "Yes, that's what I mean Tarun. But I must tell you that pure metallic arsenic is seldom poisonous. It is its white colored salt Arsenious oxide, known in the vernacular as Sankhya or Somalkhar which is poisonous. It is this salt which is often loosely referred to as arsenic. When a chemist talks of arsenic, it is the pure arsenic, but when a toxicologist or a pathologist like me talks of arsenic, he is probably referring to arsenious oxide. We sometimes refer to it as white arsenic also, because of its white color" "Arsenic certainly seems an interesting poison. Please tell me more about it doctor." "Tarun, arsenic is a metallic poison known since ancient times. An eighth century Arab alchemist Geber produced arsenious oxide, from realgar, a naturally occurring red colored ore of arsenic found in lead and iron mining, and thus made available to the humanity one of the most cruel, deadly and widely administered poisons. In Imperial Rome a form of arsenic was used as a poison to such an extent, that kings, queens, and other important court officials regularly employed official food-tasters! It has been a favorite with the poisoners because it fulfills many of the criteria of an ideal homicidal poison..." "I beg your pardon? Do you mean to say that there are things like ideal homicidal poisons? What in the world does this term mean? How can anything as sinister as poison be ideal?" "Tarun, there not only are ideal homicidal poisons, but ideal suicidal poisons too. You see, there are several poisons in this world, but not all can be used homicidally or for suicide. Only certain poisons are ideally suited for these purposes. Poisons which suit well for these purposes are known as ideal poisons." "It is still not very clear to me. Would you please explain with some examples?" "Sure. Let us talk about homicidal poisons first. A bitter poison, like strychnine, can obviously not be given with homicidal intent. The victim would immediately spit it out. Thus a homicidal poison must be tasteless. Similarly a poison which is colored can not be given. Copper sulphate is poisonous, but it is blue colored. If a killer mixes it in water or milk, it will render these liquids blue, and the victim would not drink it. Thus a homicidal poison should be colorless too. There are several other criteria which have to be fulfilled as well before a poison qualifies as an ideal homicidal poison. It should be easily available, fatal in only a small quantity and symptoms of both acute and chronic poisoning must mimic natural diseases..." "Why should this be so?" "Because then the public at large would think that the person died of that natural disease whose symptoms the poisoning mimics, and the killer would go scot free. Arsenic qualifies well in all the above criteria. Symptoms due to its poisoning mimic natural diseases. While acute arsenic poisoning resembles gastro-enteritis, chronic arsenic poisoning presents a combined picture of stomach upsets, peripheral neuritis and dermatitis..." "Sorry to interrupt you doctor. You have introduced some new terms which I don't understand. What in the world is meant by acute and chronic arsenic poisoning?" "Tarun when a large dose of a poison is given in one go, killing the victim within minutes, it is called acute poisoning. On the other hand when small doses of a poison are given over a long period of time, typically over years, it is called chronic poisoning. If a wife wants to kill her husband, it would be very easy for her to mix sublethal doses of a poison in his food over a long period of time. By sublethal dose, I mean a quantity of poison which is not enough to kill the victim in one dose. The hapless husband would die in the end after a few years. In this case he would be said to have died of chronic poisoning." "oh, I see. So you were telling me about the criteria of an ideal homicidal poison." "Yes, I was telling you that the effects of arsenic poisoning resemble natural diseases. Its effects are cumulative, so the poisoner does not have to rely on one large, fatal dose; he can give it little and often, thereby weakening his victim by stages before delivering the fatal dose. An ideal homicidal poison should be undetectable in the dead body. About one and a half century back, arsenic fulfilled this criteria as well, but no more now. Before 1836, it was impossible to detect it in the body organs. All these facts made it the poisoner's ideal choice. So commonly and successfully was it used for homicidal poisoning that once it was variously referred to as king of poisons or poison of poisons. Since many people used it to do away with rich old uncles and aunts, it became known in France as poudre de succession, or "inheritance powder". The history of crime is replete with cases of homicidal poisonings by arsenic. Arsenic was ostensibly bought for killing rats, but it was often used for homicidal purposes. Women purchased it to kill rats; the rat in most cases used to be the husband!" "Funny joke! What about ideal suicidal poisons?" "A person who is going to commit suicide with poison, probably wouldn't worry about its color or even taste. He wouldn't be bothered with taking large doses too. He would be more concerned about the pain the poison is likely to produce. He needs a poison which produces minimum discomfort, and produces death or at least sleep within minutes, so his agony is lessened. Sulfuric acid is a deadly poison, but it would kill rather slowly; in about 12-24 hours. Moreover it is a strong corrosive producing severe burning pain in the mouth and throat. A potential suicide may be interested in death, but he probably wants a quieter death. So Sulfuric acid is not an ideal suicidal poison. Barbiturates or sleeping pills on the other hand are ideal suicidal poisons, because they would put a person rapidly to sleep, and then to death. There are no unpleasant symptoms." "Oh I see. While talking about arsenic you mentioned the year 1836. What happened in that year?" "In that year a successful test for arsenic was developed for the first time. It was called the Marsh test and it ultimately brought about its downfall as an extremely successful homicidal poison. One quality of arsenic makes it a very poor candidate as a homicidal poison; it can be detected in the dead body, virtually years after the body has been buried. Thus the poisoner leaves a permanent record of his deed in the dead body... "But how can anyone detect the poison in the body, once it has been buried?" "There are laws in all countries which allow the law enforcement agencies to unearth or exhume the body, if strong suspicion develops against some person later on. There have been cases where the bodies have been exhumed as late as 3-4 years after death, and arsenic has been detected in their bones. An ideal homicidal poison should immediately disintegrate after doing its job. Before 1836, this peculiar property of arsenic did not cause any problems to the poisoners because there was no test for arsenic in the first place. With the development of Marsh test, this property assumed paramount importance and it rapidly fell into disfavor." "So before the development of Marsh test, all the cases of poisoning must be going undetected?" "Yes! Many celebrated cases are on record when the suspected poisoner went Scot Free merely because of the inability of the chemists of those times to detect it in a dead body. In fact tests weren't available for any poison. The only reliable test was to feed the remains of the poison to an animal and see if it died. So desperate was public that Henry Fielding (1707-1754), a celebrated English novelist clamored in despair for some way to make poison visible so that one could hang the poisoner. That was in the year 1740. This was in connection with a case in which a widow was accused by neighbors of having poisoned her husband. But no poison was found in the widow's house, nor could it be proved that she had ever purchased poison. The only thing left, therefore, was to show that the corpse had poison in it. When Fielding appealed to the doctors, they answered that there was no way to do this. The widow had to be acquitted" "And then came the Marsh test"? "Marsh test came much later. Many interesting things happened before that. One of the most celebrated cases of arsenic poisoning occurred in 1752, when a 31-year old spinster Mary Blandy murdered her father with arsenic. Her court appearance was the first trial for murder by poison at which medical evidence was called in regard to the cause of death. Dr. Anthony Addington did not possess the knowledge to analyze the victim's organs for poison, nor was he able to use chemical tests to prove that the powder Mary used was arsenic. Nevertheless, on the basis of simple comparison he convinced the court that the powder was arsenic, and Mary Blandy was convicted and sentenced to death." "How were those comparisons made?" "Mary Blandy mixed white arsenic in gruel and gave it to her father. She wanted to kill him, because he was not agreeing for her marriage with someone she loved. Two days after eating the gruel, Mr. Blandy fell seriously ill. Some of the gruel left over was eaten by the charwoman and she was violently sick too. A maid also ate some of it, and she also fell sick. Because of this peculiar chain of events, they became suspicious and examined the pan used to prepare the gruel and saw a white sediment at the bottom. They locked up the pan and next day handed it over to the doctor." "And he compared that sediment with a known sample of arsenious oxide, and found them to be similar?" "Exactly. In today's parlance they would be called physical tests. He believed the sediment on the pan to be white arsenic because it had a milky whiteness, it was gritty and almost insipid. When put in cold water, part of it swam on the surface, but the greater part sank to the bottom and remained there undissolved. Arsenious oxide behaves in exactly the same way. When thrown on red-hot iron it did not burn, but sublimated, i.e. it rose in thick white fumes. These fumes had the stench of garlic. To be sure he did perform some simple chemical tests but they were also comparative in nature. This means that he conducted some chemical tests both on the sediment and on a known sample of arsenious oxide, and both gave similar looking reactions. The court accepted these tests- the first time any court accepted a scientific evidence in a case of arsenic poisoning- and sentenced Mary Blandy to death." "That certainly is interesting! I mean science ultimately catching up with the poisoners." "Twenty-three years after Mary was hanged, in 1775, a Swedish chemist made an important discovery. Karl Wilhelm Scheele found that he could change arsenious oxide to arsenious acid by treating it with nitric acid. Arsenious acid in turn when treated with zinc produced arsine, a highly poisonous gas. This epoch making work had the germs from which a reasonably good test for arsenic could be developed. This work was actively pursued by scientists in Germany, but the break-through was provided by an English chemist James Marsh. In 1836, he published a method for converting arsenic in body tissues and fluids into arsine gas, which was quite similar to that of Scheele. But the interesting thing was that Marsh was able to convert arsine back to metallic arsenic which could be shown to the court. It is much easier for a non-technical person like a judge to convict a criminal when he can actually be shown the poison which killed the victim." "How did Marsh convert arsine to metallic arsenic?" "As the gas escaped, the gas was ignited, and Marsh held a cold porcelain bowl against the flame. The metallic arsenic precipitated on the porcelain in the form of a black deposit. The process was unbelievably sensitive, making it possible to detect as little as a fiftieth of a milligram of arsenic! The Marsh test revolutionized the investigation of poisoning, and it was quickly taken up by crime scientists." "After the development of the Marsh test it must have become a lot easier for crime scientists to prove the presence of arsenic in a dead body?" "Yes surely. In 1840, the Marsh test was used in the celebrated Lafarge poisoning case. In January of that year Charles Lafarge, a minor French industrialist, died of suspected poisoning at his home in Le Glandier. Arsenious acid was found in his stomach, and it became known that his wife, Marie, had bought arsenic as rat-poison. She was arrested and sent for trial. The application of new scientific methods proved futile at first. When the Marsh Test was applied to corroborate earlier findings of arsenic by traditional methods, the results proved negative. The defence was elated, but the elation was short-lived, as the experts declared that the test worked better on organs other than the stomach. Exhumation of Lafarge's body was carried out for the purpose of retrieving these other organs for testing. Famous French toxicologist Dr. Mathieu Orfila was summoned by the court. He applied the Marsh test correctly and found arsenic in Lafarge's body. This case stirred up so much controversy in France, that the entire country was divided into Pro-Marie and anti-Marie factions. The case ended up in Marie being delivered the sentence of life imprisonment. Marie served 10 years of sentence. She was released by Napoleon III in 1850, and she died the following year still declaring her innocence! "Every killer does assert he is innocent. So arsenic has really been responsible for many killings. Good that the scientists ultimately came up with a good test for arsenic. Tell me doctor, what are your conclusions regarding this man Radheshyam?" "When his body was brought to me, I immediately suspected chronic arsenic poisoning..." "Really? What made you think so?" "The fact that his relations were not good with his wife, and that he was complaining of loose motions and vomiting for the last two years. The doctors were not able to find out a cause for his gastroenteritis. This is a classic picture of chronic arsenic poisoning, when the wife is stealthily mixing it in her husband's food. To top it all, she was often seen mixing some white powder in his food. But what clinched the diagnosis was the examination of his dead body. I am now positive he died of chronic arsenic poisoning." "How did you arrive at this conclusion?" "One of the landmark symptoms of chronic arsenic poisoning are the skin changes. The most important skin changes are, first, pigmentation and second hyperkeratosis, which is nothing but a technical term for thickening of the skin. If arsenic is given continuously for some years, even skin cancer may develop. You yourself remarked on the rash this person has all over his body. This rash is nothing but pigmentation. As you can see, this is finely mottled, brown rash, presenting a picture as if colored rain drops splashed his body. In fact this rash is often called "raindrop rash". This rash resembles measles rash in many ways. You can also see that his palms and soles are thickened. This is the hyperkeratotic change, another classical sign of chronic arsenic poisoning. In fact, even if I hadn't been told anything, just this change would have brought arsenic poisoning to my mind. You can also see that he has an irregular thickening of nails which is another good sign of chronic arsenic poisoning. The final clinching fact was the chemical test. when I applied Marsh test to his internal organs like liver, spleen and kidneys, arsenic was found to be present in abnormally high amounts. It is certain that he died of chronic arsenic poisoning. Let us phone the police and tell them about it." "Yes, certainly we should. Thank you doctor for giving me such interesting information on arsenic. What are you going to tell me the next time?" "Tarun, next time I shall tell you about Spanish Fly, which as you shall see has acquired a very notorious reputation. "

Science Fiction The Weird House -Marygold Gupta (Author's Note: This story was written under the pseudonym Marygold Gupta, a female character (she is my wife actually). The story deals with the weird consequences of being present in a four-dimensional universe. According to Einsteinian physics, we live in a 4-dimensional universe; we perceive 3 dimensions as belonging to space, and the remaining dimension as time. Theoretically the space-time dimensions are interchangeable, although in ordinary day-to-day experiences these dimensions remain "fixed" and do not appear to interchange. This story deals with the hypothetical situation when these dimensions interchange frequently. There is no technical flaw in the story, except for the fact that the story assumes that these dimensions interchange very frequently. The consequences are interesting and serve to strengthen the concepts of space-time in people's minds.) **** I should have known I was asking for trouble when I asked Gujral to build a four-dimensional house for me. Well, it all happened like this. I was reading the classic science fiction by Heinlein called "And He Built a Crooked House" in which one Quintus Teal makes a four dimensional house for his rich oilman friend Homer Bailey. Many bizarre incidents occur in this house because of its weird topological properties, which really baffle the mind, till finally one severe earthquake makes it disappear. The incident seemed so interestingly bizarre to me that I myself wanted such a house so I reached Gujral and asked him to built me one such house. "Sure, I can do that but do you know what it means in the first place?" he asked me. "A lot more money than the three dimensional house", I replied naively. "No, no that. I mean the concept of a four-dimensional house." "Sure. Perhaps I can explain you the concept with the help of a diagram. Look, there can be six cardboard squares joined along edges to make a cube. You can cut along seven edges and unfold the cube to make a flat Latin cross". Saying this, I reached out for a paper and a pen and made out a diagram explaining him that I did know what I was talking about. The diagram was like this:- There can be six cardboard squares joined along edges to make a cube. You can cut along seven edges and unfold the cube to make a flat Latin cross He gaped at me in admiration. I continued, "In a similar way, one could join eight cubes at their faces to make a four-dimensional tesseract. Of course lots of engineering skill would go into it to keep some of the cubes getting distorted. If you cut certain of these faces, the tesseract will unfold to make a solid three-dimensional cross of eight attached cubes. In such a house when you pass from one cube - or room to be more precise - to another, lots of weird things happen, because of the peculiar connections of these rooms." While I was saying this, I quickly doodled out the diagram of a three dimensional projection of a four dimensional house. Such a projection is essentially a solid three-dimensional cross of eight attached cubes, much in the same way a two dimensional unfolding of a three dimensional cube shows up as a Latin cross. This diagram appeared like the one appearing to the right. One could join eight cubes at their faces to make a four-dimensional tesseract He studied the diagram and then looked at me in admiration. Finally, to my relief, he said that he would do the job. He warned me though that it was his first job. He had indeed learnt the art of four-dimensional architecture from his visit abroad to Betelguese last year, but lot more could be learnt from actual experience. In a year the house was ready. When I moved in it, I found it really funny. Just the type of house Teal had built. I thanked Gujral and paid him the money. But within a day I found a strange things happening in the house. No clock would move in the house. Watches, clocks, metronomes, all time measuring devices would work alright outside the house but once brought inside the house they would go kaput. When brought out they would start moving again. I immediately rang Gujral. He came over immediately and after examining the house (and all clocks and watches in it) for some time scratched his head and began mumbling something. "What is it?" I snapped. "Rather logical, I would say. Look, we made a four dimensional house and in the process converted the temporal dimension to spatial dimension. Now here we have four spatial dimensions instead of three spatial and one temporal, so you see clocks can't move in this house. You can't eat your cake and have it too." "Keep that to yourself," I broke in angrily,"nothing of that sort happened to Teal's house. You have erred somewhere." "That was fiction madam. This house is for real. Anything can go in fiction. We are talking about the real thing now." he replied. I swallowed that and decided to try the house anyway. But it was hellish without the clocks. I would have to rely on guesswork. Sometimes I would reach office two hours late or sometimes had to wait endlessly for the peon to come and open the office. I got tired finally and asked Gujral to make repairs. "Do something Gujral, but make the clocks move again. I don't mind losing one dimension but do something." "Okay, I will try.", he scratched his head,"Meanwhile what about moving to your original house?" I did that and kept hearing sounds of hammers, chisels and drills working inside the house for a whole month. I didn't have even the faintest idea as to how he was demolishing one dimension. But demolishing he was. That was for sure. Finally I received a call from him informing me that the house was ready and I cold move in. To my great relief the clocks were moving. But another problem seemed to have arisen! When I moved in, I found I was in a circus. Everything seemed flattened like a cardboard. Tables, chairs, almirahs, my books, everything. I looked in a mirror. A cardboard-like figure stared back at me. Even I had been compressed like a cardboard! I was horrified. I rushed to the 'phone and rang Gujral. No need to tell you the phone was compressed like a cardboard. "I will come over", he sounded anxious. I prayed to God he hadn't demolished one spatial dimension in error and made us two dimensional creatures. However, when he came he confirmed my fears. "But what the hell did you do with the temporal dimension?", I asked, after I had heard him. He shuffled his feet nervously. "I don't know what really happened. Let us see what we started with. We had four dimensions, which all appeared as spatial dimensions to us. This is what you wanted, right! One of these was the temporal dimension, which I converted into the Spatial dimension. Now since you wanted your clocks to run, I had to recreate the temporal dimension, which had earlier been converted to the spatial dimension. Since all dimensions looked the same, I couldn't really locate the temporal dimension. It seems I demolished a spatial dimension by mistake and converted it into the temporal one." But that still left us with one unaccounted dimension. One dimension can not just evaporate in thin air. I was wondering what had happened to it. I asked Gujral about it, but he appeared as confused as ever. After he had left I looked at my watch. It was 6.00 pm and it was moving. That was some solace. I went to the kitchen as it was my tea time. When I looked at the kitchen clock I had the shock of my life. It was showing 12.00 noon. It was an automatic clock hung at a considerable height. Nobody could have tampered with it. How could two different watches in my house show two different times? Utterly confused, I rang Gujral again. After a moment's confusion, he blurted out. "Oh, now I get it madam. I probably smashed two dimensions and converted them to two temporal dimensions. That brings back your lost dimension as well. You are now living in a space comprising of two spatial and two temporal dimensions. That's why everything is appearing to you like a cardboard, and the clocks are showing two different times." Oh, go to hell." I said and hung up. (MaryGold Gupta, S-299 Greater Kailash-1, New Delhi-110048, INDIA, Ph: 91-11-6465460; FAX:91-11-5759476)

SCIENCE IN CRIME DETECTION-37 MASTERY OF THE PAW On 31 November 1993, I dealt with one of the strangest cases of my life. A shrivelled object was brought to me from Madhya Pradesh, which looked very much like a mummified human hand (reproduce fig III-2 on page 40: Both figures are to be reproduced!). The police wanted me to tell them whatever I could, after examination of this hand. The story that the police gave me was quite bizarre. To understand the full implications of the case, I feel it necessary to tell my readers the details of the whole case. The mummified hand (let us call it the "paw" for the sake of brevity) was recovered from the farm house of a multimillionaire land owner Bhiku Ram in Madhya Pradesh. He was 36 years of age and an influential land owner. He owned many properties in Madhya Pradesh as well as in several other states of the country. The farm house from where the paw was recovered was called Dilshaad farm house by Bhiku. It was very vast and ran into several acres. It was surrounded by vast jungles of Madhya Pradesh. Bhiku was a married man, but like a typical multimillionaire he had several vices. He had several concubines who used to visit his farmhouse regularly. One of his favorites was Anita Bai. She was a good looking female, about 22 years in age, and had only a widowed mother at her home. She came into this profession mainly to support herself and her mother. Everybody in the locality knew about the relations between Bhiku and Anita Bai. They had intimate sexual relations. Lately Anita Bai was demanding some more favours from Bhiku which he was denying. She wanted a house for her own as well as more cash per month. Bhiku thought it was too much. He was giving her about Rs 3,000 per month, and in his opinion, this amount was sufficient for Anita to support two people- herself and her mother. Moreover Anita was spending on an average only about 7 nights per month with Bhiku, and he thought Rs 3,000 for 7 nights were enough. Anita on the other hand was asking for Rs 10,000 per month and a house, to which Bhiku did not agree. This led to some misunderstanding between them. The story would have perhaps dragged on like that, but meanwhile Anita became pregnant and her demands became more insistent. She threatened to take legal recourse if Bhiku did not take immediate steps to compensate her properly for her favours. This frightened Bhiku, and he contacted his best friend Suresh for advice. The police got the preceding story from Suresh. God knows what advice Suresh gave to Bhiku, but soon after both Anita and her mother disappeared from the locality quite mysteriously. When the police enquired from Suresh, he told that he had advised Bhiku to pay up immediately as desired by Anita and then break up the relations with her as her demands were getting unreasonable. He advised that if he continued having relations with her, he was likely to land up in trouble. The police however did not believe Suresh. It was widely believed by the police as well as by several residents of the locality that Anita and her mother had been done to death by the goons of Bhiku, and perhaps it was done on the advice of Suresh. However the police had no proof for this belief. Bhiku and Suresh were arrested by the police and produced in the court for alleged murder of Anita and her mother. In the court both Bhiku and Suresh kept insisting that they had nothing to do with the disappearance of Anita and her mother, but the court remanded them to police custody for a period of 15 days. It meant only one thing- that both Bhiku and Suresh would be tortured savagely to get the truth out from them. When the mummified paw was recovered from Bhiku's farmhouse, the police felt that they had clinched the issue. Bhiku and his goons must have buried the bodies of Anita and her mother somewhere in their farm. Some animal from the neighborhood must have dug up the bodies and have devoured it, and perhaps one hand remained lying in the farm on the surface unnoticed. When the paw was given to me, Bhiku and Suresh had already spent 5 days in police custody, but despite sustained interrogation, they were not coming out with any useful revelation regarding Anita's and her mother's disappearance. Either they really did not know anything about their disappearance or otherwise they were acting very tough. The police was of the latter view. When the paw was given to me, I was specifically asked to tell the police whether it could be the hand of a female and the approximate age of that female if possible. If the hand turned out to be that of a female around 22 years of age, it would be a very strong point in favour of the police theory that Bhiku and his goons had done Anita and her mother to death and had buried them somewhere in the farmhouse. The police also made a programme to dig up the farm of Bhiku in order to recover the bodies- of course after my report was received. I made a detailed examination of the paw. It looked pretty much like the hand of an adult human being. On the back of the hand I noticed some hair too. I plucked a few hair and preserved them for later investigations. Before proceeding any further I decided to take an X-ray of the paw first. The X-ray showed rather a bizarre picture (reproduce fig III-3 on page 41 here) . If you look carefully at this picture, you will find that one of the bones is broken. It is the second long bone from the right side. Technically this bone is known as the metacarpal bone. However the anatomical configuration of the bones made me somewhat suspicious. I was not quite sure of my conclusions. But to set my doubts at rest, I removed the soft tissues from the hand and extracted the bones. Then I assembled the bones together. The adjacent figure (please reproduce figure III-4 on page 42 here) shows the result of my experiment. The hand on the left is the one I assembled and the one on the right is that of a known human hand. One can see that there is a lot of difference between the anatomical configuration of the two hands. It led to only one conclusion- that the recovered paw was not of a human but of some animal! I could not say what animal it was, but one thing was sure. It was not the hand of a human. I contacted a well known zoology professor for help on this aspect. He studied the bones in detail, and informed me that it was the paw of a bear! I was taken aback by this information. But to set all doubts at rest, I did some further experimentation on my own. I decided to check the hair I had removed from the paw earlier. All hair - whether they belong to humans or to animals- are covered with some small plate like things called scales. The pattern of scales in a human hair is different from the one found in animals. When I compared the scale pattern of the hairs recovered from the paw with known human hair, there was a lot of difference (reproduce figure III-5 on page 43 here). In the adjacent figure, the hair on the top is the one I recovered from the mummified hand, and the one on the bottom is a hair I recovered from one of my lab assistants. One can see that there is an obvious difference in the scale pattern of the two hair. It was quite obvious now, that the police had recovered the paw of a bear and not of a human. What had really happened, one may ask. Well, I believe a bear must have died in the jungle in the neighborhood and some animal must have dragged it to the safety of the farmhouse for having a comfortable meal. The paw remained uneaten after the meal and it was abandoned. It got mummified with the passage of time, and it was finally recovered from the farmhouse of Bhiku. Well, if the paw was not of Anita, what had actually happened to her? Where was she? Subsequent to my findings the police began searching on other lines. A detailed investigation showed that Anita had some distant relations in Bihar. A police party was sent there to find out about her. And to the surprise of every one concerned, Anita was found there alive, hale and hearty. Disillusioned with her life as Bhiku's concubine, she had got an abortion done and moved with her mother to Bihar to start a new life! The police party found Anita and her mother safe and sound at the village in Bihar. Since she had no friends in Madhya Pradesh, she did not find any need to tell anyone she was moving- not even to Bhiku, with whom she was obviously annoyed. After coming to Bihar, she had been making a living as a household help. Had a detailed forensic examination of the paw not been made, it was quite possible that Bhiku and Suresh would have spent an inordinately long time in the custody of police. When Bhiku and Suresh were released from the police custody, they came and fell on my feet. They thought I had saved them from the agony of a long police custody. The poor fellows did not know that it was forensic science which had actually saved them! (To protect the identity of the individuals, their names, as well as the various dates of occurrence have been changed)

Forensic Toxicology THE FOLLOWING ARTICLE APPEARED IN THE JULY 1998 ISSUE THE POISON SLEUTHS DEATH BY DNOC -Dr. Anil Aggrawal "Good morning doctor. Oh, my God, what are you doing today? You have the dead body of a young girl today. What happened to her? Please tell me." "Good morning Tarun. The name of this young girl is Seema, and she died this morning in the hospital. Yesterday night she had some severe problem for which her neighbors had taken her to a hospital, but there she died soon after. Well, let me tell you everything from the beginning. She is 24 years old and used to live alone. She is originally from UP, where her parents and family is still residing. She was doing a job in Delhi as a typist, and so was living here for about 2 years. She apparently had a love-affair with one of her colleagues Ramesh. They had a good relation for quite some time, and there were rumours that they were even going to marry." "Oh, I see. But how did she die?" "About a month back, Ramesh's parents fixed his marriage somewhere else, to which Ramesh also did not object much, which in effect meant, that he had tacitly consented for the marriage. When Seema came to know about it, she became mad, and there was a verbal duel between the two. Quite coincidentally, this happened in their office, and everyone saw them fighting them in this manner. That's how we know about this incident." "What was she saying during the verbal duel?" "The colleagues who were present there told the police, that the verbal duel suddenly started and went on for about 15 minutes, till their colleagues intervened. She was saying that Ramesh had shown utter meanness and had deserted her because of her looks. As you can see, she is quite fat. I have measured her height and weight. She is 157 cm in height and her weight is 76 Kg, which as you can see is quite much for her height. Apparently there were sexual relations between the two also, and she was heard saying that Ramesh used their friendship for his advantage, and is now deserting her. He never intended to marry her in the first place." "Is this accusation correct?" "Well, nobody knows for sure. But from what I hear from the office colleagues, Seema was not a very attractive girl, and no male was much interested in her, except for official relations. If Ramesh started nurturing relations with her, it's quite possible, that he was looking for some free fun. Once he had his fun, he decided to marry elsewhere." "Are you hinting that he killed Seema?" "No. Not me. I do not say anything before I have scientifically confirmed my facts. The sequence of events was this. Ramesh had visited her flat last night. Apparently the meeting was aimed at reconciliation. Ramesh wanted to explain Seema the circumstances under which he was marrying elsewhere. The fact of his visit last night is confirmed by Seema's neighbors. Even Ramesh himself has agreed to this fact. Apparently, he stayed there for about 15 minutes and then left. Sometime after he left, Seema knocked at a neighbor's door and told her she was not feeling well. She was sweating profusely, had very high fever, complained of intense thirst, and was in great distress. The neighbors immediately realized that something was terribly wrong with her. They took her to the nearby hospital. Before the doctors could ask her anything, she fell into a coma, from which she never recovered. She died after 6 hours." "Oh, I see. So how did she die? "I will tell you about that a little later, when I tell you about my scientific deductions. But before that, it would be very necessary for you to know, why this case has been brought to me. Her parents were immediately informed by the neighbors and they have arrived this morning. After hearing everything, they have put a very damning allegation on Ramesh. They say that last night during his visit, Ramesh must have given her something to eat because of which these symptoms started. The fact that the symptoms started just after Ramesh left has given credence to this allegation. The police also believes this theory. They think that Ramesh wanted to get rid of Seema, otherwise she could have made life hard for him. She could even have kept troubling him after marriage, and could even infuse all kinds of doubts in the mind of his future wife, so the best course for Ramesh was to put an end to her life." "What does Ramesh have to say in this regard?" "The police has enquired Ramesh, and he says that he did visit Seema to explain her his position. The marriage was being held at the instance of his parents, and he could not interfere in that. But Seema was not ready to listen to him. She was very depressed. After about 15 minutes of unsuccessful attempts at reconciliation, he left." "What do the doctors at the hospital say about the cause of her death?" "The doctors did not have much time to examine her. I have talked to the doctors there. They feel it could be a case of salicylate poisoning or perhaps even thyrotoxicosis." "I don't really understand these two terms. Please explain them to me." "Tarun, acetylsalicylic acid is used in modern medicine for the relief of pain. Ordinary dispirin, which is available in the market for pain relief contains 350 mg of acetylsalicylic acid. If too many tablets are ingested, one can get salicylate poisoning. The toxic dose of acetylsalicylic acid is about 200-300 mg/kg. Thus you can plainly see that for Seema who was 76 kg, the toxic dose is about 65 tablets. People may ingest pain killers for committing suicide. This practice although very common in foreign countries, is not so common in our country, mainly because people are not aware of this fact. But Seema was an educated girl, and she might be well aware of this fact. She was depressed because of recent developments and she might have ingested these tablets after Ramesh left. Ramesh obviously could not give her so many tablets to eat, and even if he had given her, she would not have eaten them. So if this case does turn out to be that of salicylate poisoning, it is quite probable that Ramesh is indeed speaking the truth, and had nothing to do with her death." "Why did the doctors at the hospital think in the first place that she was having salicylate poisoning?" "Because of her symptoms. The symptoms of high fever, thirst and profuse sweating are seen in salicylate poisoning. It might surprise you to know, that although acetylsalicylic acid is normally used for the control of high temperature, during overdose, it produces high fever itself. The doctors also noted difficulty in respiration and very rapid heart rate. Before she went into coma, she also had convulsions. These features are quite typical of salicylate poisoning. The same features are also seen in thyrotoxicosis, a disorder of the thyroid gland, in which the thyroid starts secreting excessive amounts of thyroxine. That is why the doctors gave this as the second diagnosis." "Oh, so now we have all the views. Now tell me what your investigation reveals." "Tarun, we can straightaway rule out thyrotoxicosis. In this disorder, the person is excessively lean and as you can see, Seema is very much overweight. Acetylsalicylic acid poisoning seems a more likely choice. But when I examined her hands, I found some yellow stains on them. This, and certain other findings, which I shall explain shortly, immediately alerted me in the direction of another poison- a very rare one, but one which causes exactly the symptoms exhibited by Seema" "What is that poison doctor? Please tell me. I am getting curious." "Tarun it is known as DiNitroOrthoCresol or DNOC for short." "DNOC? Never heard of this poison. Please tell me something more about this poison." "Tarun, DNOC belongs to a family of compounds known as dinitrophenols (DNP). These compounds are highly toxic and can rapidly produce death. Toxic effects often appear at blood concentrations greater than 30 mg/l while concentrations greater than 60 mg/l are associated with severe toxicity. Dinitrophenols are mainly used as pesticides. Dinitro-ortho-cresol (DNOC) and Dinitrophenol are the two main phenolic pesticides. These substances are used in agriculture chiefly as selective weed killers for cereal crops and for the destruction of potato haulm. In dilute solution they may be used as an insecticidal winter wash for fruit trees. The principal risk of poisoning is in the agricultural use of concentrated solutions for spraying crops. Absorption occurs by inhalation and ingestion and also through the skin; excretion is extremely slow so the poison tends to accumulate in the body. The risk of absorption is much greater during hot weather. Those exposed to these chemicals (such as farmers when spraying these chemicals) are generally recommended to wear respirators to avoid inhaling them. They are also subjected to periodical examination to determine the concentration of these compounds in the blood, which should not exceed 20 micrograms per gram. Dinitrophenolic compounds, especially DNOC stimulate the human metabolism very strongly. In fact DNOC can increase the tissue metabolism by 1200%! The effects of dinitrophenol in stimulating metabolism have been known since 1885, and at one time DNOC was even used in the treatment of obesity and misused for "slimming". "I couldn't understand that last point very well doctor." "Tarun, any compound which stimulates metabolism that greatly basically burns up your energy stores in the body. The main energy store in the body is the fat. If it is burnt, the person will get slim. All exercises are aimed at this only- to burn as much fat as possible. But exercise is time consuming, boring and exerting, so people are on the lookout for easy way out such as chemicals and drugs which can either reduce appetite or enhance metabolism, i.e. help burn up excessive fat. For the former effect, drugs known as amphetamines were once very popular, but they have lost favour as their side effects are too many and too serious. DNOC stimulates metabolism by as much as 1200%, i.e. it burns fats 12 times faster than in a normal man. Obviously this will form a good candidate for weight reduction." "Then why don't doctors prescribe it for weight reduction?" "Because it is a very toxic drug. But early in the century several people did take it for the reduction of weight. When fatalities started occurring, the doctors came to know about its serious toxic nature, and they advised the people against taking this drug. But it was commonly available, as it was a herbicide, so people purchased it with impunity and many overweight girls are known to have consumed it in an attempt to become slim overnight. But in fact nothing of that sort happened. They died instead. Following the deaths of several girls in this way, the availability of this drug was restricted to certain people only. But still many people can get hold of this drug and may consume it. You may be surprised to know that today DNP and DNOC can be illegally bought over the internet too! Many gullible youngsters who fall prey to these internet advisers are paying with their lives. These internet advisers are quacks who encash upon the gullibility of such youngsters. They claim that their concoction would cause a quick weight reduction, but it doesn't. It kills them instead. DNOC is about 5 times as potent as dinitrophenol. The characteristic effect of these two drugs is the uncoupling of the oxidative phosphorylation, causing a great increase in tissue metabolism......" "Sorry to interrupt you doctor. You just talked about uncoupling of oxidative phosphorylation. I don't understand this term quite well. Can you explain me please?" "Tarun, this is a technical term the details of which I may not be able to explain in such a short discussion. But I will tell you certain basics. When glucose is burnt in the body to carbon dioxide and water, it passes through 3 stages. The last stage is technically known as oxidative phosphorylation. During each stage some energy is liberated, which is stored in the form of ATP (Adenosine TriPhosphate) molecules. DNOC and other dinitrophenolic compounds inhibit the formation of ATP molecules, without inhibiting the process of oxidative phosphorylation. This means that although body is burning glucose continually, it is not getting any energy in the form of ATP molecules. This situation when energy is being produced, but is not available for the formation of ATP molecules is technically known as uncoupling of oxidative phosphorylation. This excess energy has to be dissipated in the form of heat. That is why patients poisoned by this poison show high body temperature and sweating. Since body is not getting adequate amounts of energy, it tries to burn more and more glucose in a futile attempt to get energy. Even fat stores are mobilized, but all the energy produced is dissipated as heat. This is the basis of increase of metabolic rate by these compounds." "Oh, I see. But the symptoms are also seen in salicylate poisoning. How did you know she had taken DNOC?" "By the yellow stains on her hands. This yellow staining is very typical of dinitrophenolic compounds. When these compounds come in contact with skin, they form trinitrophenol or picric acid, which is yellow in color. By the yellow stains on her hands, I immediately realized that she must have handled dinitrophenol compounds. I believe she was quite concerned about her weight, and was taking this compound reqularly in small doses. I do not know where she procured this compound from, but probably she must have contacted one of those quick weight reducing quacks, who must have given her this compound. When she was taking small doses, nothing dangerous happened. But due to recent developments, she was quite convinced that she had lost Ramesh because of her weight problem. In a bid to overcome her weight problem overnight, she must have tried to get at it in one go, and may have consumed a great amount of drug immediately after Ramesh left. That is how the symptoms appeared." "But how are you sure, Ramesh did not administer her this drug?" "Because of this drug's peculiar color, odor and taste. No one can administer this drug to another by deceit, without the other immediately coming to know about it. I have exmained her blood and have found high amount of DNOC in her blood. The levels are about 100 mg/l, which is surley a fatal level. Subsequent to this, I asked the police to search her house and look for all medication bottles there. Normally the police would never have even peeped there. But following this discovery, they looked at her almirah and did indeed find a medicine chest. They brought her entired medicine chest. I noticed 3 suspect looking bottles and put their contents to examination, and in one of these, not very surprisingly, I did find high amounts of DNOC. The police have noted the name and address of the doctor from the label of that bottle, and a party has been despatched to UP to arrest that doctor. It appears that the quack who prescribed this medicine to her is based in UP, and during one of her visits to her parents, Seema must have picked this medicine." "Oh, how very clever of you doctor. Without your clever deduction, poor Ramesh would have unnecessarily been arrested and implicated. This was a most interesting discussion. Tell me what are you going to tell me the next time?" "Tarun, next time, I would tell you about a very interesting poison- Cadmium."

Forensic Jokes, Puns & Tidbits Forensic Puns 1. A tourist in Vienna is going through a graveyard and all of a sudden he hears some music. No one is around, so he starts searching for the source. He finally locates the origin and finds it is coming from a grave with a headstone that reads: Ludwig van Beethoven, 1770-1827. Then he realizes that the music is the Ninth Symphony and it is being played backward! Puzzled, he leaves the graveyard and persuades a friend to return with him. By the time they arrive back at the grave, the music has changed. This time it is the Seventh Symphony, but like the previous piece, it is being played backward. Curious, the men agree to consult a music scholar. When they return with the expert, the Fifth Symphony is playing, again backward. The expert notices that the symphonies are being played in the reverse order in which they were composed, the 9th, then the 7th, then the 5th. By the next day the word has spread and a throng has gathered around the grave. They are all listening to the Second Symphony being played backward. Just then, the graveyard's caretaker ambles up to the group. Someone in the group asks him if he has an explanation for the music. "Don't you get it?" the caretaker asks incredulously. [Guess now, before scrolling down] No cheating, make a guess before scrolling. Not even a wild guess before scrolling? He's decomposing.* 2. I was standing in line at an airport to check in for a flight. For 15 minutes, the queue hardly moved, and patience was wearing thin. Suddenly an irate voice from the back demanded to know what the holdup was. A voice from the front replied,"I'm afraid Riga mortis has set in." (Contributed by Chris Bane. Published in Readers' Digest December 1999 page 32) 3. Is it correct to say that all Forensic Personnel are in a grave situation?