Published on December 8, 2023
AHMEDABAD: What connects Ahmedabad’s Odhav to Telangana and Vadodara’s Harni to Rajasthan? A series of crimes, according to the experts at the Directorate of Forensic Sciences.
Forensic analysis of fingerprints in 62 cases of thefts, house break-ins and murders in the state — among the highest in recent years —- has found that inter-state gangs were involved in 25 cases or 40% of them.
Of the six cases of blind murders or accidental deaths, two of the victims were from outside Gujarat and their bodies were found in the state.
H P Sanghvi, director of Gujarat DFS, said that fingerprints have been major evidence at crime scenes, accounting for detection of thefts and house break-ins involving about Rs 3.2 crore cumulatively. The experts attribute the detection of these cases to the National Automated Fingerprint Identification System (NAFIS).
“Gujarat has been one of the biggest contributors to NAFIS with an extensive database of 19 lakh fingerprint records. After the fingerprints are carefully collected from the crime scene, they are checked against the NAFIS database to establish whether the crime under investigation involves anyone with a past record of crimes in Gujarat or elsewhere,” said Sanghvi.
Some of the cases solved with the help of NAFIS include theft of Rs 6.3 lakh in Kalol, of Rs 6.7 lakh in Shinor, Rs 3.8 lakh in Harni, Rs 12 lakh in Odhav, Rs 7 lakh in Nilambaug and Rs 9 lakh in Ramol among others.
DFS officials said that improved techniques to collect fingerprints – even the latent ones which are not easily visible– and training given to the cops to preserve the crime scene till the arrival of forensic experts are also the reasons behind the detection of cases.
Parth Shastri Archive 