011. What do the bones tell us?

Two years back, I was called to a village near Alwar to solve a very bizarre case. While some digging was going on for a construction purpose, a laborer unearthed several bones. He immediately ran to his contractor and showed him the bones. The contractor contacted the police and the police in turn contacted me. That is how I came into the picture.

While I was going through the police records of the area, I realized that about 2 years back a 22-year-old boy was reported missing from that village. His name was Suresh. There was a widely held rumor that Suresh had run away from his house in search of a proper job. It was common view that he was quite dissatisfied with his parents and wanted to live away in an independent manner. So, when, one day Suresh was not found in his home, everyone in the village assumed that he had run away from home. Suresh's parents however were not ready to admit that he had run away. They constantly maintained that he had fallen in the hands of some criminal who had killed him and had buried him somewhere.

The real story was deeper than this. Actually, before Suresh's disappearance, nobody could even think about it. Suresh was in love with a local belle Geeta. She was the daughter of a rich money-lender of the village, Karan Singh. Karan Singh had repeatedly warned Suresh not to meet Geeta but, since his own daughter was secretly in love with Suresh, he couldn't stop their meetings. Once he had openly sworn to kill them both, if they met again.

About a month after Suresh's disappearance, Geeta was found missing from her house too. The story took a new turn now. Was Geeta secretly kidnapped by Suresh? Were Suresh and Geeta separately kidnapped and murdered by Karan Singh's goons? Or, was their disappearance totally unrelated to each other? Nobody knew what indeed had happened.

To be sure, Geeta was extremely beautiful and she could very well have fallen in the hands of a rapist and murderer. But, how to know what had really happened. Nobody even was sure that Suresh and Geeta had been killed.

When I examined the bones preliminary, I found two skulls among the bones, so it was sure that I was dealing with a least two dead people. But, I had to prove that out of them one skull was a male and the other, a female. Only then, could we prove that Karan Singh had indeed got Suresh and Geeta murdered. Not only that I had to prove that out of other bones too, half belonged to a male and half to a female. This was challenging task, but I decided to undertake it.

How do we find out sex of the victim from the bones? Many times I have been asked this question by the police officers and public. In this case, I am going to provide you with my well kept secrets.

Many sexual differences are found in the skull. Look at fig.1, carefully, which shows two skulls- one of a male and the other a female one. The upper one is male skull, while the lower one is a female. There are several ways in which we can say that a given skull is male or a female. One is to look at the bone just beneath the eyebrows. This is technically known as SUPRA ORBITAL RIDGE. It is much more prominent in a male skull than in a female skull (shown in the figure by arrows). Further when you see the angulation between the forehead and the nose, you find that in a male skull, this angulation is very prominent. The bone behind the ear is known as MASTOID PROCESS. This is larger, round and blunt in a male skull and smaller, smoother and pointed in a female skull. This point is also shown in the figure by arrows. There are several other differences in the skulls, but these three are very prominent in the given diagram and I generally infer the sex from these 3 points.

Let us now come to the jaw technically known as MANDIBLE. The jaw bone above is of male, while the jaw bone below is of female. The jaw bone is squarer in the males while it is much more rounded in the females Fig 2.

Hip bone shows the maximum differences between the two sexes. There are two hip bones in each individual. If you stand with your arms akimbo, your palms are over the hip bones. These hip bones unite with the back bone(SACRUM) and from a circular jug like structure known technically as PELVIS. Nature has made pelvis much wider in women because , women have to bear children. The babies, while they are within the bomb, remain enclosed by pelvis. If nature had made pelvis narrower in females, babies would find it very difficult to come out of womb at the time of delivery. It is the wide pelvis, which gives the females their characteristic waddling gait. We make use of this fact in determining, whether a given hip bone is of a male or of a female. Look at Fig.3, it shows 2 hip bones. The upper one is a male hip bone, while the lower one is a female. The angulation of the bone is more in male as shown in the diagram. There is a notch in the hip bone which is known as GREATER SCIATIC NOTCH. This notch is shown in Fig 4. This notch is more acute in the male and much wider in the female(as shown).

The backbone or sacrum is shown in Fig 5. Sacrum is narrower in the male. You can guess that the sacrum on the left is a male one.

Feeling like a detective already? Well, let's go on. There are differences in arm bones and thigh bones. The rounded projection, which you are seeing fits into the shoulder. This rounded projection is noticeably larger in the male. Yes, you are right; the bone on the left is a male one. Finally look at fig 7, it shows the thigh bones. The lower position fits into the knee joint. If we stand, the thigh bone erect on the table, then the male thigh bone known technically as FEMUR, makes a greater angulation than the female thigh bone. In the given figure, the bone on the left shows an angle of 80⁰ and the bone on the right shows an angle of 76⁰, so obviously the left bone belongs to a male.

Using these criteria, I could prove that there were in fact two sets of bones- one belonging to a male and the other to female. Armed with this knowledge, police raided the house of Karan Singh and took him into custody for interrogation, In the beginning he denied of knowing anything, but later broke under pressure. He admitted to having killed both of them when he realized that Geeta had becomes pregnant. The court gave him rigorous imprisonment for life.

By reading this account you must yourself be feeling like a detective already. If you like, you may preserve these issues of 'Crime & Detective'. Who knows, one day you might turn out to be a great detective and help the police.

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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