Around 2.30 a.m. on January 8, 2005, an armed gang descended on the house of AIADMK MLA K. Sudarsanam at Thanakulam in Tiruvallur district near Chennai. As one of them stood outside holding a gun, the other members broke open the front door with an axe and began attacking the inmates with iron rods. Sudarsanam, who rushed out of his room, was shot dead with a single-barrel muzzle-loaded gun. The gang escaped with cash, jewels and mobile phones.
The dacoity-cum-murder shook Tamil Nadu, raising questions about law and order. Back then, there were hardly any CCTV camera. The only clue the police had was that the gangsters spoke in Hindi. Just as a team led by the then Inspector-General of Police, S.R. Jangid, was figuring out the details, forensic experts found that a fingerprint lifted from the scene matched with that of a criminal involved in 24 dacoity cases since 1996.
“That fingerprint was the turning point in the case. We found that it matched with that of Ashok alias Lakshman, who was lodged in the Agra jail for dacoity. He belonged to the infamous Bawaria gang,” recalls T. Dhananjchezhiyian, then Inspector in the Tamil Nadu Fingerprint Bureau. The investigation team fanned out and arrested the Bawaria gang members in Uttar Pradesh, which years later inspired a Tamil film Dheeram Adhikaram Ondru.
Interestingly, Tamil Nadu hosts one of the earliest fingerprint bureaus in the world. Fingerprint classification, also called the Henry system after Sir Edward Henry, credited with devising it. Sir Henry, who was also the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police in London, had introduced the system in India when he was the Inspector-General of Police of the then undivided Bengal. Inspector E. A. Subramania Aiyar of the Madras Police was among the earliest to be trained by Sir Henry in using the system. Until then, there was a Central Bureau of Anthropometric Measurements (based on the Bertillon System) attached to the Madras Jails Department. This Bureau was converted into the Madras State Fingerprint Bureau in 1895. Subsequently, the Government of India had ordered the establishment of the fingerprint system of identification throughout India in 1897.
P. Paramasivan, a retired officer of the Fingerprint Bureau, recalls a series of house break-ins at Tallakulam in Madurai in 2016, which followed a pattern seen in Coimbatore and Erode. The gang would lock the doors of neighbouring houses from outside before breaking open the doors of their targeted house. The police were unable to crack the case initially. “Fingerprints were also lifted from the houses of neighbours and one of them matched with that of a criminal in Gujarat’s Dhaod district and that led to the arrest of the gang members,” he said.
Vinit Dev Wankhede, Additional Director-General of Police, State Crime Records Bureau, under which the Tamil Nadu Fingerprints Bureau functions, explains that fingerprints lifted from crime scenes are compared with jailed inmates for elimination. Then the ‘chance fingerprints’ are updated in records, compared and verified in the FACTS Version 7.0 database.
“The National Automated Fingerprint Identification System (NAFIS), a web-based application, has been rolled out to consolidate all fingerprint data available with the States/Union Territories for creation of a national-level searchable fingerprint database. Our bureau also undertakes scrutiny of fingerprints on questioned documents referred to it by courts/other departments for expert opinion. Many cases have ended in successful conviction,” he added.
