Shaikh Mohammed Siddiq, a 44-year-old artist who often gets calls from Mumbai police to draw sketches of suspects of crime, recalls a 10-year-old incident. “On couple of occasions, Mumbai police pressured me to make false sketches of suspects of crime as the junior officers were under pressure to show the progress of investigation to their seniors. I had no option but to do that.”
It may not be the case with every portrait of suspect which the investigating agencies usually release after major terror attacks or much-hyped criminal cases, but the success story of forensic sketching has never been an encouraging one in our country. Nevertheless the investigating agencies always treat this as an important process of investigation.
The July 13 terror attack at three places in Mumbai is a case in point. The Anti Terrorism Squad (ATS) of Maharashtra police, which has got suspects’ sketches ready, has released them to various police stations to get further clue.
But barring a few cases of local crime, perpetrators of major terror attacks in India have never fallen prey to the investigators on the basis of their portraits made by the sketch artist.
So what’s the significance of forensic sketching in India? To answer the question, we need to examine the various aspects of this process that involves artists and witnesses and investigators.
“After every crime, be it a terror attack or a rape case, eye-witnesses can give us physical and facial description of the culprit or the suspect’s. In many cases like rape, the victim can give accurate details of the criminal while in some cases we don’t know who has committed the crime. In such cases we try to track down the suspects with dubious credentials with the help of local people. Sometimes CCTV footage provides these information,” says R N Meena, former DCP (Crime) Delhi.
The details include suspects’ facial features (shape of nose, hair style, eyes, eyebrows, chin, cheeks etc), physique, height, footprint and other added features if any.
Says Arun Bhagat, former Delhi Police Commissioner, “In older times, manual sketching was prevalent but today we have computer software where you have numerous shapes of parts of the face. The witnesses are shown variety of nose, chins, eyebrows etc and the artist matches them taking
the details of witnesses’ recollections about the suspects.”
But even today many investigating agencies sometimes prefer manual sketching over computer generated work depending on the nature of the case.
The witness recollects and narrates every possible details of the suspect to the sketch artist who translates them in the form of a portrait. Once the witness approves the final sketch, it is circulated to police stations, in the concerned areas and released to the media.
Though sketch artists have their own take about the authenticity of manual sketching and computer drawing.
While Siddiq, who does manual sketching and who has made portraits of the suspects of July 2006 Mumbai train blasts which killed over 200 and injure 700 others, feels manual sketching gives him freedom to go as far as he can with the eye-witnesses’ details, computer sketching has a limitation.
“You have dozens of shapes of nose, eyes, eyebrows etc and you tell the witness to choose from them. So most often the witness tries to either escape through it or sometimes get confused, while it’s not the case with manual sketching,” he says.
But well-known sketch artist Naresh Korde, who has helped investigators with his intuitive drawing of suspects in major bomb blasts in Bangalore (July 2008), Malegaon (September 2006), Ahmedabad (July 2008) to name a few, is of the view that when both manual skills and computer software are applied together, it gives awesome result.
“The software which I use is developed by me. I take witnesses’ accounts very patiently, try to read their mind and then draw a sketch using my software technology. I don’t show them different types of facial parts in the beginning,” says he.
Another artist Harminder Singh, who uses computer software too and who have drawn the portrait of the culprit in the infamous Dhaula Kuan rape case which turned out to be a vital piece of information for the police, stresses the importance of an artist’s visualisation. “It took me two days and multiple sittings with the victim to get to the correct sketch. It provided a crucial lead to the police. So unless you have your immense artistic visualisation and ability to map the brain of the witness, no software will help you draw a correct sketch,” he says.
Besides these issues, hundreds of other factors play their roles in the making of an authentic portrait. A witness’s ability to recollect the incident and correctly narrate it is as important as a sketch artist’s ability to read his mind. Explains Korde: “If one of the two fails to deliver, you won’t arrive at the right conclusion.” Former Maharashtra ATS chief K P Raghuvanshi is of the view that the lack of accuracy is major reason why these sketches fail to yield any result. Despite scepticism and limitations, a major section of investigators feel that forensic sketching is an important part of investigation.
One of the staunch supporters is Delhi Police PRO Rajan Bhagat, who feels that there is nothing wrong in exploring it as sometimes it gives us important clues like the one in Dhaula Kuan rape case. He says, “Once you get to know the facial attributes of a suspect, you can pin-point his area, community etc and nothing can be as vital piece of information than these.” Agrees Arun Bhagat, “If you don’t have any clue in a case, what’s the harm in exploring this method?”
But there are others who strongly recommend limited use of forensic sketching as it has more evils than benefits.
“A wrong sketch not just misleads the course of investigation, but it also quite often becomes a trauma for those who resemble the suspect’s sketch. They have to unnecessary go through hardship and in some cases innocent people are even assaulted,” opines Raghuvanshi.
Meena echoes a somewhat similar concern as he says, “Sometimes an innocent person provides false information to the police due to fear and he has to serve 14-day jail term. So a suspect’s sketch turns traumatic for those who look like them.”