Saki Naka rape: In a first, KEM doctor matches bite marks of suspect

In a first-of-its-kind forensic investigation, the Mumbai police with the help of Dr Hemalata Pandey, forensic odontology expert at KEM Hospital, managed to rebuild the exact impressions of the bite marks of the suspect left on the body of the victim. The accuracy with which the forensic doctor managed to match the bite marks with the dentures of the accused have left even experts spellbound. They feel that the breakthrough method of investigation is likely to help the police in future cases too.

In the Saki Naka model rape case, investigators were at their wit's end on how to match the bite marks on the victim's body with that of the suspect. "When the victim came for medical examination, it was more than a month since the incident. The bite marks on her private parts had healed and we were feeling sad that we could not help her. That is when she mentioned about having the photographs of the bite mark taken from her phone," said Dr Pandey.

The forensic department has a software to corroborate facts given by the victim about the photographs. "Every digital photo has information (meta data) on when it was clicked, time and date of the clicked photograph and what type of camera was it clicked from. With the help of a software, we managed to get the meta data which matched with the information given by the victim," said Dr Pandey.

She said that meta data confirmed that the photo was taken from the camera of an Iphone 6+ handset on April 3 night.

"The biggest roadblock after this was scaling the image. Generally, when we are not on the spot and police has to click a photo, we ask them to do so with a coin or something whose size can be correlated later. In this case, it was the floral print of the dress that the victim was wearing at the time of the crime. She had clicked a photo were the dress was visible. We then called in for her dress and we were able to convert the photographic proof to clinching evidence," added Dr Pandey.

Even the accused assistant police inspector Sunil Khatpe was puzzled when the forensic expert asked for his dental impression. "When we asked him to give dental impression, his immediate query was if the bite injury is still there," said Dr Pandey.

It took KEM Hospital's forensic team 2-3 weeks to analyse all the details and match the dental impression of the accused with the bite marks on the victim. The report prepared by the forensic team is now part of the charge sheet.

Dr Harish Pathak, head of the forensic medicine department at KEM, said, "Dr Pandey's inclusion in our department has strengthened our forensic team. An important part in the work of a forensic odontologist is examining bite marks. These can be applied by the attacker, or by the attacked; and in both cases are very valuable to the investigation. We are happy that Dr Pandey could make the dental impression of the bite mark with the help of photographs and there is no discrepancy between this dental impression and bite marks on the victim."

Story so far
A 29-year-old model was allegedly sexually abused and extorted by three policemen of Saki Naka police station in the wee hours of April 3. She had approached the hospital for getting herself medically examined. The medical check-up copy (available with dna) clearly mentions presence of bite marks on her private parts and complaints of peno-oral sex.