Forensic science to solve whodunits
By : Jyotshna Pandit

Slow poisoning has traditionally been a foolproof crime, only to be detected by the likes of the fictional Hercule Poirot. More recent innovations by modern-day criminals include burning a bride with petrol instead of kerosene, or poisoning someone through inhalation or injection instead of through his food. All of these methods of murder were difficult to scientifically detect. Until now, that is.

Research being carried out by the National Institute of Criminology and Forensic Science (NICFS) under the Ministry of Home Affairs, is enabling crime-busters to determine whether these hitherto undetectable modus operandi have been adopted. While most of the findings will be implemented in forensic laboratories and by police forces around the country, some have already earned the nation kudos abroad.

Teams of scientists in the NICFS's forensic science division's six branches- Ballistic, Biology, Chemistry, Document, Photographic and Plan Project- are working feverishly to catch up with the new generations of smarter criminals, an offshoot of increasing dissemination of education in India's burgeoning population.

The research done here has immediate application and is not obscurantist. For instance, a problem in the ever increasing cases of dowry burnings had come up as more cunning in-laws were using petrol instead of kerosene. Kerosene had always been easy to detect, as it does not burn up completely (to the extent that you can smell it just after the incident).

Petrol, however, burnt up totally, and scientifically it became difficult to counter the claims by suspects that the bride's clothes had caught fire while cooking.

Scientists at NICFS, however, perfected a technique, through chemical examination, to determine if petrol had been used. It has to do with a dye that oil companies put in petrol (for purposes of differentiation from other products); this dye can be detected by a simple chemical test done on the burnt area.

Similarly slow poisoning is something that forensic scientists can now detect. For centuries, people were being murdered by administration of small doses of a poison like arsenic. It had a cumulative effect, so that the final dose was always too small to detect, and cause of death was attributed to other causes (like cardiac arrest).

The NICFS team has come up with a study on metabolities, the metabolic products of drugs and piosons. These show the chemical changes the drug has produced in the cells of the victim; it is seen as far more reliable than hunting for traces of the poison in the body.

This particular project has several other applications. Recently criminals have realised that it is relatively easy for the authorities to detect a poison if it is mixed in the victim's food; a postmortem take pieces of the stomach, the intestine, the liver, and the pancreas, to examine the poison, and generally find it.

So the recent trend was to make that victim somehow inhale the poison, or inject it into his bloodstream. A normal postmortem searching for poison would not detect it, and the police would end up looking silly in court. The use of metabolites, however, can determine whether poison was used, regardless of how it was administered.

Furthermore, there have been cases where someone has sought to fix blame on an innocent person by injecting poison into the victim's stomach after death has already occurred (telling the police the victim died after eating at so-and-so's place). The use of the metabolite method determines exactly when the poison was given, and thus prevents the authorities from being misled.

Some other recent NICFS research, related to detection of poison, is in the field of preservation of postmortem tissue. This would be a methodology related research, rather than a directly related one.

Since storage conditions in India are still poor, postmortem tissue often putrefies, making extraction and purification difficult. The process of extraction also contributes to loss of sample, and thus the NICFS toxicologists have been working towards developing antigen-antibody techniques which are cheap and help study the tissue itself. This technique helps overcome the effect of putrefaction in blood, urine and body tissues for identification of a toxic compound, particularly at minute levels.

The use of such techniques, classified as immunological techniques, in toxicological work is seen to be a breakthrough in the field as there is no awareness of its applied potential among forensic scientists; Indian researchers are yet to recognise the use of immunological techniques in absolute identification of a poison and its metabolic products. Another major project undertaken by the NICFS relates to the development of indigenous lectins.

Lectins are plant-based substitutes for anti-serum, a basic ingredient in blood examination of crime exhibits. Anti-serum is expensive, does not last long, and occasionally has non-specificity.It can also lead to infectious diseases like AIDS and hepatitis, as it is derived from humans and animals.

While foreign scientists have discovered lectins, plant based proteins which act like antibodies but are not formed in response to antigens, there were no indigenous plants that could provide it. NICFS labs are looking fo lectins from plants found in India, to provide a cost-effective and safe alternative to anti-serum. Not only does the NICFS hope to raise awareness in the scientific community on the potential application of lectins in forensic science, but they hope to commercialise it soon, as lectins are easy and cheaper to raise, as well as being blood group specific. (INAV)

The Saga of Laden
Men, Matters, Memories

By : M L Kotru

The Osama Bin Laden saga continues, uninterrupted and unabated. The US Government has announced two rewards of five million dollars each for information leading to the arrest of conviction of the Saudi terrorist chief and Mohammad Atef, described as Bin Laden's chief military commander. A Federal Grand jury returned a 238-count indictment in New York a week ago charging Bin Laden with conspiring to bomb US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in August and of committing acts of terrorism against Americans abroad. The indictment accuses Bin Laden of leading a vast terrorist conspiracy from 1989 onwards. The US government claims that its knowledge of Bin Laden's activities came from one such informant who had worked for Bin Laden, transporting weapons and explosives, helping buy land to set up training camps and assisting in running his finances.

Prime Minister Nawaz Sharief of Pakistan allows three far right religious groups- Lashkar-i-Toiba, Jammat-e-Islami and Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (previously Harkat-ul-Ansar) to make a show of strength by staging their annual conferences in Punjab. Chief of Dawat-ul-Irshad, or which the Toiba is the militant arm, says Bin Laden has become a symbol of Islamic resurgence and with God's grace and Bin Laden's muscle, aided by men of the Lashkar-i-Toiba, the terrorist campaign in Jammu and Kashmir will soon be given a new dimension. Hafiz Muhammed Saeed, tells the concluding session of the Markaz congregation that the Toiba would extend their sphere of activities to Himachal Pradesh as well. The head of the Jamaat-e-Islami spews fire with matching intensity.

Some six weeks ago the Saudi Intelligence chief, Prince Turki bin Faisal is reported to have met the Afghan Taliban leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar urging him to hand over Bin Laden to Saudi authorities. Soon afterwards the Saudi Arabian government withdraws its ambassador from Kabul and asks the Taliban to recall their man from Riyadh. Just about the same time the Taliban were making announcements that they did not believe that Bin Laden has been involved in any terrorist acts and that it would not order ''this honoured guest'' out of Afghanistan. The Saudi action, against this backdrop, was considered a stricture against the Taliban. That, as I said, was six weeks or so ago. Last week the Saudi Interior Minister Prince Nayef bin Abdul Aziz said that Bin Laden is not working against Saudi interests, and, his country, therefore, was not concerned about his activities. Prince Nayef goes on to say that Bin Laden was not involved in the bomb attacks in Saudi Arabia (directed against American establishments there) in 1995 and 1996. But he makes a concession, as well. While it is possible that people who are inspired by Bin Laden or shared his ideology may have carried out the attacks in Saudi Kingdom it was not true that he (Bin Laden) was involved in these attacks. A thought that should make the Americans sit up and wonder at what follows: Bin Laden does not constitute any threat to the Kingdom. It does not square up with American calculations and their interests.

The Taliban, meanwhile, perform a soft shuffle. They give Bin Laden's accusers up to November 20 to present all or any evidence against the Saudi terrorist before the Taliban version of the Afghan Supreme Court. If no charges are preferred they will stick to their original assessment that Bin Laden is a well wisher and honoured guest of the Afghan people and therefore welcome to stay on in the country as long as he wishes to. That, so far as the Taliban and their Pakistani mentors are concerned, puts the ball squarely in the American court. And the Americans, given their magnificent Pakistani obsession, would not be willing to see the relevance of Bin Laden phenomenon, coupled with the show of strength put up by the Islamic extremist groups in Lahore last week, in its real context. Nawaz Sharief is only being clever by half by projecting himself domestically as an ardent Islamist while at the same time wanting to be seen by the Americans as a moderate.

The triple show in Lahore, each in its own way having stoked the fires of sectarianism and fanaticism, was intended by Sharief to send a shiver down the American spine over the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in Pakistan and for himself to be seen as a moderate Muslim reformist. The calculation was that Americans will wish that such a reformist Prime Minister must be helped to survive. As a wellknown Pakistani columnist puts it's that is Nawaz Sharief's ticket to the economic bailout.'' The same columnist acknowledges the fact that the Americans are afraid of fundamentalism and do indeed see that fundamentalists do pose a problem in Pakistan. But what Sharief is doing is actually promoting the trends towards violence by his very idiom, the columnist adds. Sharief is advocating Islamic revolution. He has capped his revolutionary rhetoric by ramming a constitutional amendment through the National Assembly to make Quran and Sunnat the supreme law of the land. This has emboldened all extremist religious groupings, causing them to believe that Pakistan is going to be their exclusive inheritance.

It is in this atmosphere of growing fundamentalist aspirations in Pakistan that one sees the Bin Laden phenomenon acquiring ominous dimensions so far as this country is concerned. As Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, chief of the Markaz Dawat-ul-Irshad, put it the other day his group (Lashkar-e-Toiba) ''has sent a large number of Pakistani trained terrorists for strikes in Kashmir since last year''. The Markaz, incidentally, is one of the prime recruiting centres future terrorists who receive training at Bin Laden's training camps in Afghanistan. Saeed is not one whit worried by suggestions that his Markaz might be declared a terrorist organisation by the Americans. And, frankly, he need not fear any American ban or declaration of the Markaz as a terrorist organisation. After all when the Harkat-ul-Ansar was dubbed a terrorist outfit by the US all that the Harkat did was to rename itself Harkat-ul-Mujahideen. The Markaz, spread over several hundred acres on the outskirts of Lahore, besides, enjoys the active support of the Pakistani government including its various training programmes. Left to him Hafiz Saeed would simply love it if his idol, Osma Bin Laden, the symbol of Islamic resurgence as he describes the Saudi terrorist, could somehow be persuaded to make the more comfortable Markaz his home. That, though, may not be possible in the near future not as long as the Americans continue to shore up the Islamic Republic of Pakistan.

It is for us to expose the direct nexus between Pakistani agencies, Bin Laden and the unrelenting terrorist activity in Jammu Kashmir, with the Lashkar-i-Toiba now threatening to enlarge its scope to Himachal Pradesh. Pakistan will of course continue to deny any direct involvement in terrorist activities in Kashmir- they have been doing it for the past decade now- but we have the top leaders of Nawaz Sharief's three favoured fundamentalist organisations saying almost in unison that it is their Islamic duty to reinforce the jihad in Jammu and Kashmir. He cannot disown his patronage of the three organisations and more importantly of the Markaz Dawat-ul-Irshad. The rolling acreage of the Markaz was made available by the government of Pakistan and it was not very long ago that the Governor of Punjab and one of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharief's closest Cabinet Ministers visited the Markaz and praised its activities including the training camp which is very much a part of the complex. Interestingly, the Markaz Chief, Hafiz Saeed was on CNN last week showering high praise on Bin Laden. CNN is an American network and we could perhaps prod the US State Department to take a look at the tape. That, together with the Saudi interior Minister's clean chit to Bin Laden, might help them to see things for what they are.

In the meantime we cannot afford to relax our vigil in Jammu and Kashmir. The Pakistani fundamentalists have their counterparts in place in the State and they would be only too willing to help salvage the terrorist insurgency there.

We would also do well to remember that the US State Department, as much as the Clinton Administration, have simply not been able to shake off their view of a pre-cold war India. Pakistan continues to be seen as a loyal friend, a client State, if you will. There is no hope that Washington will leave its anchronistic regional perspective behind and rest the future of relations with India on a more balanced and mature foundation. This requires a conscious effort to break out of the mould of thinking about South Asia which inevitably consisted of policies blindly equating India and Pakistan.

English language in India
By: Prof. K.R. Gupta

The issue-should English continue as a language in India-continues to be debated though the attempt seems to be futile and an exercise in vain. The fact of the matter is that English language continues to be an important language of the country, and enjoys a certain privileged position, having got associated with the status-conscious people of our country. It is not an exaggeration to say that we can safely divide the people in India into two categories-those who know English and those who don't. Those who know English are in command of the situation wherever you may go, and those who are denied the education in the medium of English or don't have enough proficiency in English, are treated as inferiors or are themselves somewhat complexed. It is a fact that cannot be refuted, that English is the lingua, franca in a vast country like India where too many languages are spoken and so many diverse cultures and ethnic groups co-exist. It is also a fact that we have not been able to forge effectively as a nation of a kind, with the help of a common language other than English. Hindi is our national language yet it is realised that it does not enjoy popularity amongst the people of many of our States. That English fulfils a large number of utilitarian purposes is an accepted fact as, for example, acquisition of knowledge of all kinds in a fast moving world of informatics and knowledge, is hardly possible in any other language of India. As a country which is developing at a very fast pace, we should not get bogged down to the Indian languages as our lingua franca and not taking advantage of the language that we already have. It can be safely said that English with its almost two hundred years of existance on our soil, cannot be called a foreign language. We have over the years adopted and mastered it, and have made it our own. We have learnt a great deal through the acquisition of this language, and we have taken advantage of English being a language of our legacy of two hundred years.

Nehru said that English works as a window for us to discover and learn about the outside world, and we can definitely realise at once the practical approach of a man who is otherwise often charged of being an idealist by people! Gandhiji too expressed himself in English in order to reach a wider number of people, and was well aware of the fact that in order to build a public opinion, he is using English as a medium to achieve an end that is getting India freed. Gandhiji realised the impact that his ideas could have on the minds of those who mattered. If he had got involved in controversy of not English but some other language for India, we must now realize, he would have definitely got side-tracked to the minor issues, and the main of the Movement to fight against the British Raj would have been overlooked.

REALISTIC SITUATIONS

So, English is learnt by the people in order to acquire a social status. For women, it means better matrimonial prospects. The advantage of having sufficient knowledge of English always puts one in an advantageous position, and one's value for the purpose of employment also goes up. Education is a State Subject and that has created some problems in some of the States of our country where English language cannot be given enough importance, but the results have been frustrating. The graduates without English language, normally find it difficult to get suitable jobs and thus fee frustrated. The power of money is working behind the acquisition of English in our country. Anybody and every-body including our politicians, devise (and also make provisions) for their children to get their education through the medium of English and those who don't get their education through the medium of English are the economically less privileged classes. The advantages of being educated in English medium are in abudance, and the disadvantage of not getting educated in English too are innumerable. Thus English becomes the language of the rich and the people who matter. The masses don't get the advantages because they are often led by the leaders who brainwash them, by convincing them that English is not the language of our country and that it is difficult to learn?

The irony of the situation can be understood if we note the fact that considerable importance is attached to the knowledge and command that a candidate may have over English. He is one up compared to those who have not acquired sufficient command over the English language. Whereas the fact of the matter is that those who have acquired sufficient command over the language, have done it because of their education through the medium of English. They have, no doubt, managed the command over the English language because of their belonging to the economically better off class of Society. Thus, those who belong to the economically better off strata of the society and get education through the English medium have all the opportunities open to them. The economically deprived sections cannot get their education through the English medium and therefore, have virtually no opportunities at all in the job market. The denial of education through English medium has not been their choice, but the economic compulsion forced them to have only the mother tongue as the medium through which they can get education, or no education at all.

IMPORTANCE OF ENGLISH

English language enjoys a considerable importance in India, both as the language of great utility and a language of the elite of the society. It is purely because of these two realistic reasons that more and more young people are learning English with a zeal. It is further confirmed by the fact that the number of English medium schools have gone up by thousands, and people of lower middle class too prefer to send their children to such schools. The command over English language gives ample opportunities to their children in future attainment of all kinds. So even economic hardships are borne by the people for the sake of their children, who study in english medium institutions where hefty fees are charged, and a considerable stress is laid on other expenses like uniform, and many other co-curricular activities for which parents are forced to pay.

English has been by far the most widely understood language in the world. Even the French, Germans, Japanese and Russians who used to hate having to communicate in English have begun to accept harsh reality. They use this very English language as their main advertising and sales medium.

Today when 80 per cent of science and technology research as well as most of Computer data and Software is available only in English, we can't afford to maintain a contemptuous attitude towards this language.

Even in France 80 to 90 percent of schools introduce English as the first foreign language. About 95 percent of French scholars are researchers find it un-avoidable to use english books in their research work. 53 commonwealth countries use english as their official language. Again the USA is a predominantly English speaking country.

Even take the case of Punjab has realised the importance of English and the Govt has introduced English from Class I. The Punjabies who yearn to spread their wings abroad are mastering English language. Almost all prestigious entrance tests are conducted in English.