012. Examining the Scene of Crime

Many people have asked me, what do we do at the scene of crime. In this column, I hope to explain a little bit about what we do at the scene of crime.

Many times when a murder is reported in an outfield, the police officers prefer to take us to the scene where the dead body is lying. The idea is to give first hand information to the police regarding the murder. There are many vital pieces of evidence which can get lost once the body is moved.

Consider the case of a man who has been shot down by a bullet and is lying on the field. Only a forensic pathologist can say by examining the dead body, as to which is the entrance wound and which one the exit wound. To a lay person, or a police officer, both the wounds of entrance and exit would appear the same. If forensic pathologist examines these wounds, he can reconstruct the line of fire, by joining these two points and say which direction the bullet came from. Once the body is moved, it would become impossible to reconstruct this 'line of fire' which can prove vital in later police investigations.

Sometimes, when a dead body is moved from the actual place of murder to the mortuary, it might have to be dragged, dropped and dumped at various places in between. This produces artificial abrasions after death. These are technically known as 'post-mortem abrasions' or simply as 'P.M. abrasions'. A doctor may wrongly think that these abrasions were produced during life and this may confuse the whole issue. So it is better to examine the body at the scent of crime itself.

If you refer to diagram 1, you can have some idea about how we examine the body at the scene of crime. This persons was killed in a shoot-out incident and it was very important to know which direction the bullets came from (Fig.1A). You can see from the figure, the body is lying in the open, and an overcoat is lying spread-out along with him. In such case, first thing we do is to photograph the body. The body has now to be removed. Before removing the body, we insert pegs around it and any material lying beside it, such as overcoat in this case(Fig.1B). the body and accompanying materials are then removed. However, before removal of the body, we note all the injuries on the body and determine how they were caused. This includes the determination of entry and exit wounds caused by firearms. Now a strong string is passed round the pegs(Fig.1C). This gives an idea of the position of the body. The body is now removed to the mortuary and injuries are marked in great detail. First of all, the body is examined with the clothings on (Fig.1D). Any injuries on clothings are marked by circles. Now the clothings are removed and the injuries on the body are noted (Fig.1E). The injuries on clothings and on the body must be co-related. Finally we may return to the scent of crime and check once gain the position of the body. Since, now we have an idea of the entry and exit holes on the body, we can tell the police, which direction the bullets came from.

Many times interesting clues can be recovered from the scene of crime, such as cigarette butts, hair, fibre fragments, blood stains, empty cartridges and so on. These clues also help us in several ways. But the main thing to be stressed here is to have a look at the body in a detailed manner and record its position most accurately. That single thing can work wonders for us several times.

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