Forensic Diaries | Book Review — Dead Men Tell Tales: The Memoir of a Police Surgeon by B Umadathan

Simply 50 pages into the e-book is the chapter Deceptive Proof, which is a couple of part in forensic medication that offers with ‘self-inflicted and artificially created wounds’.

B Umadathan has worn many hats throughout his four-decade-long profession as a well known forensic medical knowledgeable in Kerala. He was a professor of forensic medication, police surgeon, medico-legal adviser to Kerala Police, principal of Authorities Medical Faculty, Thiruvananthapuram, and director of medical research of presidency of Kerala, to call just a few.

With 40 years as a forensic medical knowledgeable underneath his belt, Umadathan’s memoir was imagined to open a window to the world of crimes and criminals, and encourage generations of younger docs to take up the noticed and scalpel for rendering justice. Sadly, Lifeless Males Inform Tales: The Memoir of a Police Surgeon fails to do both. As an alternative, it fills its 337 pages with a story closely loaded in favour of regulation enforcement, giving the police one clear chit after one other.

Simply 50 pages into the e-book is the chapter Deceptive Proof, which is a couple of part in forensic medication that offers with ‘self-inflicted and artificially created wounds’. “Our law enforcement officials have good data about this topic. However they discover it tough to discern between true and false complaints. There are people who find themselves consultants at making false accusations and creating proof,” explains the writer earlier than occurring to relate a case titled The Reality Behind a Sexual Exploitation Case.

The case is a couple of criticism by a mom who had accused a 40-year-old man of raping her 14-year-old daughter. “The mom had complained that her daughter had been raped by a person who ran a tea store close to their home. The woman was additionally together with her. They informed the police that the rape had occurred within the afternoon, when the woman was alone and each mother and father had been away,” writes Umadathan. “Regardless of repeated questioning, he (the accused) refused to confess that he had dedicated the crime. He informed them that the woman’s mom had borrowed Rs 100 from him they usually had an argument about it. The policemen brutally beat up the accused,” he writes.

“After recording her (the rape survivor’s) assertion, I examined her. I used to be stunned to search out that there was not a single bruise on her physique or her genitals. And her hymen was intact. I realised that she had been mendacity. The blood stain on her skirt was additionally clearly fabricated, as she didn’t have a single wound on her physique… I warned the younger (police) officer, who had attended my session on forensic medication throughout his coaching interval, to watch out of faux complaints sooner or later.”

In one other chapter, Deaths in Lock-Up, Umadathan talks concerning the three autopsies he performed on individuals who had died in police custody. In all of the three instances, the writer’s knowledgeable opinion guidelines out police torture. “I believe the quantity of people that die out of the blue in police stations is rising. The police can play a job in decreasing the variety of incidents of stress cardiomyopathy (damaged coronary heart syndrome) at their stations,” he writes. “Folks ought to be capable of enter a police station with out worry. If the police converse politely and deal with folks in a dignified method, they’ll acquire folks’s appreciation.”

Umadathan writes about “a younger man, who had hung himself utilizing his dhoti” in a police lock-up. The autopsy examination was performed on the Kollam District Hospital within the presence of senior docs to make sure transparency. “He had been accused of theft and the inspector had informed him that they must retrieve the stolen items the following day. Maybe fearing torture, he had dedicated suicide,” provides the writer.

Lifeless Males Inform Tales accommodates the writer’s recollections of a number of instances of homicide that dominated the headlines in Kerala within the second half of the final century, together with the notorious Sukumara Kurup case in 1984 a couple of man who staged his personal dying to gather insurance coverage advantages. First printed in Malayalam (Oru Police Surgeonte Ormakkurippukal) in 2010, the English translation of Umadathan’s memoir was printed posthumously.

Faizal Khan is a freelancer

Lifeless Males Inform Tales: The Memoir of a Police Surgeon by B Umadathan;
translated from Malayalam by Priya Okay Nair
HarperCollins
Pp 337, Rs 399