Saroj, 16, and Mahendra, 12 were brother and sister. On June 8, 1987, they went to play as usual in the garden, but they never returned. Saroj was a beautiful girl and her parents were always quite reserved in allowing her out alone. On that day however, she was able to cajole her parents into allowing her to go out with her brother.

A complaint with the police did not result in any benefit either. The police asked various questions, including about the people the parents suspected. But the family had no enemies whatsoever. As time passed, it became clear that Saroj and Mahendra were kidnapped by some gang, presumably with the purpose of having intercourse with Saroj.

There was a gang in town which had once kidnapped a young 19 years old girl, kept her in detention for as many as three months, during which she was forced into intercourse day and night. When the gang members were tired of sex, they would all sit together in a circle and ask her to perform naked dances in the center. After meting out this inhuman treatment to her for three months, they finally did away with her. Her body was found three and a half months later, quite putrefied in a forest. Only one member of the gang could be arrested and from him, the whole story was revealed. The body bore several stab marks, which showed that the modus operandi of the gang was to kill by stabbing.

Lakhiram and Revati, the parents of Saroj and Mahendra shivered at this thought. They kept searching for their children, but without any success.

On January 15, 1988, one highly putrefied body was found in a forest about 50 miles away from the village of Lakhiram and Revati. Most of the body had been eaten away by animals and maggots were crawling on what remained of the corpse. It was impossible to identify the dead person from the remains. I was called by the police inspector at the place. I made some preliminary examination of the bone and told the police that the bones belonged to a male between 11 and 13 years of age. Moreover, the person, whoever he was, had suffered osteomyelitis (an infection of the bone) in his right leg, about two year before. This description fitted Mahendra exactly.

Lakhiram and Revati were immediately contacted and they admitted that Mahendra had suffered from a terrible weeping sore about two and a half years back and also that the sore had healed with great difficulty after about six months of treatment.

This, of course, is not the main part of the story. This only established that the victim was Mahendra. But I could not say who had killed him or how had he been killed. This was vital for the police to know. One thing however became clear. If Mahendra had been killed, it was quite possible that his sister Saroj had also been killed and was disposed off in a nearby area itself.

A police party launched a massive search for the body of Saroj. They were expecting her body, too, to be in the same state of deterioration; so everyone's stomach was turning topsy-turvy.

But lo and behold! Two days later a constable of the search party accidentally stumbled upon a quite well-preserved body of a teenaged girl on the shores of a nearby pond. The body was naked and so well preserved that everybody could at once recognize it was Saroj.

When the search party touched the body, it felt as it was like soft wax. Everyone was nonplussed. What had happened to Saroj? I was called immediately. When I arrived there and looked at the body, I realized at once that I was dealing with an adipocere. I rubbed some of the body's material between my thumb and index finger. It gave me a cheesy feeling. I smelt the material. The smell was somewhat similar to that of old cheese. Here then was the body of Saroj, turned into adipocere and intuitively I knew that now I could tell a lot of things to the police regarding the crime.

When a person is killed and thrown away in a forest, his body will normally putrefy. But if there is water in the vicinity or the ground on which the body is thrown is wet and the temperature is quite high then the conditions are just right for the body fats to turn into wax. A very complex chemical reaction takes place for this to happen. for the more scientifically-minded readers, the unsaturated body fats are first saturated to firmer fats and this firmer fat is then split into fatty acids. Adipocere is essentially composed of saturated fatty acids such as palmatic acid, stearic acid, hydroxystearic acid and oleic acid.

Adipocere forms mainly at those parts of the body where there is a lot of accumulation of body fat. Such areas are cheeks, buttocks, breasts and thighs. Since Saroj's body had been thrown near a pond, the conditions were just right for her body to be turned into adipocere. Once a body turns into adipocere, it does not undergo normal decomposition, and remains as such. It gives the forensic expert a lot of benefits. For one thing, the features of the person remain discernible. Secondly, since the body is more r less preserved, one can say how the person died.

Adipocere is a yellowish white, greasy, wax like substance with a rancid smell. It is lighter than water. If we cut out some adipocere from the body of such a person, and put it in water, we find that it will float. It cuts easily and burns with a faint yellow flame giving offensive odor. Fresh adipocere is soft and moist, but old samples are dry and brittle.

Adipocere takes about 3 months to form, so we can form a idea when the person was done to death. The body of Saroj was found on January 15, 1988. So, at a rough guess, she must have been killed on or around October 15, 1987. She had been kidnapped on June 8, 1987. So it appeared that she had been kept in captivity for about 4 months. This pointed to her having been used for sexual purposes.

Since her body was well preserved, I could examine her genitals, which too had been converted into adipocere. Her hymen, the soft membrane which cover the vagina, was completely mutilated indicating that she had indeed been used for sexual intercourse. Her left breast and both buttocks showed very clear stab wounds. These stab wounds would normally have been obliterated if normal putrefaction had set in. But since her body had been converted into the wax-like adipocere, the stab marks were clearly visible.

Her kidnapping and confinement, her use as an object of sexual intercourse and the method of her killing, all pointed to the dreaded Devi gang which had earlier done the same deed. Devi gang had big political connections and until and unless the police had solid clues to back them, they could not dare to touch the gang. But now since I had provided them with all vital clues, they went fully armed to nab the Devi Gang and made tough inquires. Sure enough, very soon, the gang cracked up and confessed to the abduction, sexual molestation and killing of Saroj. They had to finally kill Saroj because she had become pregnant.

When the case went to court, the court admitted my medical evidence and had no difficulty in convicting the members of Devi gang. In this particular case, my knowledge of science helped me to unravel crime. A non-specialist would have been quite nonplussed to see the waxy body of Saroj, but I knew it was adipocere. To summarize, this adipocere formation helped me to

1. establish her identity
2. establish the cause of her death and
3. indicate the time of her death.

These facts together enabled me to weave a coherent story which ultimately helped in catching the culprits.

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Note: Certain figures mentioned in the text may not be visible here. Although not being able to look at the figures would not interfere with the comprehension of the article very much, if it is desired to have a look at the figures, readers are advised to consult the original text in the magazine.

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