The Hindu : Andhra Pradesh News : Vital clues hold the key Law and order

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Sunday, Feb 10, 2008
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Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh

Vital clues hold the key Law and order

Not many hospitals are taking care to preserve leads collected from victims, writes Marri Ramu

Not just offenders, even victims carry crucial clues with them knowingly or unknowingly. This makes it crucial for the investigator to ensure that the leads carried by the victims - be it in the form of bloodstains or clothes - are preserved.

But, investigators have little control over this because the hospitals and their medical staff are the first to get an opportunity to see the evidence while treating the victims. Is this vital step of preserving evidence being followed in all hospitals?

Unfortunately, it is not. A case in point is the recent incident in which a bank employee sustained a bullet wound as the building owner’s pistol accidentally went off. The firearm being pistol, there were little chances of gunshot residue (GSR) deposition.

Not to take any chances, forensic experts tried to collect the GSR using cotton swabs on the palms of the arrested person. But they could not do so in case of the victim, as the hospital staff cleaned the hands before beginning the surgery. No controversy erupted as both the accused and the victim denied possible foul play.

What if the firearm involved was a revolver and it went off in the hands of the victim himself? As GSR could not be collected from the hands of the bank employee, the police could not prove that the weapon went off in his hands only.

The small mistake of washing hands of a person injured in the shooting incident would, for ever, close chances of tracking the accused. This is not first case of such lapse being reported. Burning clothes worn by actress Prathyusha in a corporate hospital, where she was admitted after consuming pesticide and eventually died, led to a lot of speculation over the motive behind her death.

Forensic doctors say, nearly six years after Pratyusha’s case, not many hospitals are following the guidelines of preserving clothes of the persons admitted in medico-legal cases. The materials to be preserved depend from case to case. In case a person is attacked with a knife and if it’s still embedded in the body, gloves should be used to remove the knife.

Otherwise, the fingerprints on the knife would be lost. If the patient is admitted on suspicion of consuming poison, samples of the stomach wash and vomit should be taken for analysis. If bullet is embedded in a person’s body, x-ray photos from all angles around the wound should be taken. When victims of sexual assault are examined, their clothes should be collected.

But there is little co-ordination between the law-enforcers and the hospitals to ensure that such guidelines are followed.

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