THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: It was a cloudy afternoon. Dr S K Padmakumar was in the courtroom, anxiously awaiting sentencing in the first criminal case he was part of. As soon as the judge made the ruling — awarding the convict in the rape-attempt case, a migrant worker, a jail term — the victim, a 57-year-old woman, rushed towards Padmakumar and whispered: “Sir, I have something to tell you.”

The duo moved to a corner of the courtyard. “I was startled to learn that a rescue effort had landed her in trouble. According to her, she saw the migrant worker chasing a young girl and she intervened to save her. When the man turned on the woman, the girl ran away. She too managed to escape, though with bruises on her body and bites to the ear and face. We found the bite marks matching the suspect’s,” he adds.

“The woman said she didn’t divulge this to anyone fearing that it may affect the girl’s future. Her selfless love for a neighbour was humbling,” he says. For the doctor, it was just the beginning of a thrilling career where twists, turns and unexpected surprises awaited.

Currently heading the oral pathology and microbiology department at the Government Dental College in the state capital, Padmakumar was trained by the country’s pioneering forensic odontologist Dr Ashith B Acharya. Over the years, he has helped the police and judiciary deliver justice to victims of gruesome crimes, and also to save some from false accusations. Forensic odontology provides crucial supplementary evidence in the Indian legal system but faces a shortage of professionals.

This emerging branch of forensic science played a key role in identifying the accused in the 2012 Nirbhaya case and the 2016 Perumbavoor rape-murder case. Dr Ashith conducted the analysis in both. In the Perumbavoor case, the bite marks on the victim’s shoulder matched with the 3 mm gap between the front teeth of the accused.

In Kerala, the GDC Thiruvananthapuram is the only institution offering full-fledged analysis in this specialised field of forensics.

Recounting a prolonged legal battle in which dental forensics helped in convicting a man who raped a minor, Padmakumar said, “The girl was abused by a workshop mechanic when she was alone in her home. While resisting, the girl bit into his chest. The accused challenged Padmakumar’s report in court which validated the bite mark. He claimed that the bite mark was caused by his wife during a quarrel. On the court’s directive, his wife’s dental cast was taken. But it was not consistent with the evidence. Five years later, the man was sentenced to a 20-year jail term.

Padmakumar has also saved people falsely framed in criminal cases. One such episode was a rape attempt reported in Thiruvananthapuram. According to the victim, she was walking on the road, when four men came in a car and abducted her. They took her to an abandoned building and one of them attempted to rape her. However, she managed to escape their clutches. There were bite marks on her hand and the police sought Padmakumar’s help.

“We took dental casts of all the accused. But none of them matched. On a hunch, I had the victim’s cast done as well. And it matched with the marks, which showed that they were self-inflicted. Later, the girl confessed that she was trying to get back at the youth for rejecting her proposal,” he said.

Padmakumar, who is set to retire this April, wants more young dentists to take up forensic odontology.

At the root of it all...

• Forensic odontology can play a key role in fighting crime

• It helps in determining the age and sex of a person, including the dead, by examination of the teeth and skull

• Identity of a suspect who inflicted a bite can be ascertained from the mark. In such cases an impression of the suspect’s teeth is taken from which a cast is created. The model will be the exact replica of the suspect’s teeth. It is compared with the bite mark through direct and indirect methods

• Maxillofacial forensic analysis helps in determining age, gender, race and identity of a skull. It is commonly employed in tragedies involving a large number of fatalities ands also criminal cases

This story has been written by M S Vidyanandan of The New Indian Express.