Individualisation of the Biological Remains from Anthropological Perspective- A Case Study

A teenage boy went to see a wrestling bout in nearby village and disappeared mysteriously. On presumption of death under suspicious circumstances, the parents lodged a complaint and a murder case was registered in police station under section 302, 34 IPC. The incidence caused lot of unrest and protesting villagers blocked roads. After about two weeks, the skeletal remains of a human body were found on the bank of Pong Dam Lake in Himachal Pradesh. The police visited the spot and collected the skeletal remains for post-mortem examination. After about two weeks of death, a team of forensic experts from RFSL, Dharamshala visited and scientifically examined the spot and skeletal remains kept in the mortuary, collected and photographed the clue materials/physical evidences. The skeletal remains were found nibbled by wild animals indicating that the body got exposed after water level at the dam receded. The wild animals attacked and nibbled the remains and gnawing marks were seen on bones, metatarsal and heel region. In the present case, diatom analysis, study of skeletal remains, hair and faecal matter examination and DNA fingerprinting was done to ascertain the real cause of death, age, sex and identity of the person. For establishing identity and estimating the age and sex from the skeletal remains, forensic experts examined the skull, mandible and maxilla for dental eruption, pelvis and long bones on the basis of osteological, anthroposcopic, morphological and anatomical examination/assessment and the remains were found to be of Homo sapiens (Human) which were morphologically and anatomically consistent with male individual under 18 years of age. For examining the drowning case, water sample, in which possible drowning took place and femur bone sample was used for detection of diatoms. Acid digestion test was used and a correlation was established between diatoms detected in water and bone sample indicated ante-mortem drowning. In DNA fingerprinting blood samples of the parents matched with the DNA extracted from the bones which proved identity. After morphological and microscopic examinations the black hair embedded in the soil and brown hair with animal droppings collected from the spot revealed that black hair were human head hair and animal dropping was a mixture of human and animal hair probing that some wild animal have eaten the body and passed the droppings.