Forensics Check In

Aarushi Talwar. Check. Sunanda Pushkar. Check. Sheena Bora. Check. Jessica Lal. Check. Bhanwari Devi. Check. Sushant Singh Rajput. A work in progress. For someone who has handled high-profile complex cases—knottier the better—Dr Sudhir Gupta, head of forensic medicine at AIIMS Delhi, is confident he and his four-member team will find what caused the actor’s death. It’s a challenge not many would be comfortable with. Rajput’s death on June 14—he was found hanging in his bedroom in Mumbai—has been riveting the nation like a whodunit and the stakes are high.

Dr Gupta says the team will examine “all possible manner of death, including homicide”. They will corroborate their findings “with circumstantial legal evidence of the CBI”; examine if the actor was on any anti-depressant. They began their investigation on August 25, after receiving necessary medical papers from the CBI, including the autopsy and viscera reports. Work is tough, though. The scene was “badly contaminated” and Dr Gupta also questions the missing time-stamp on the autopsy report. He will go to Mumbai and speak to people who conducted the autopsy and the investigators. His knowledge of DNA profiling has helped him crack complicated cases such as the 2011 Bhanwari Devi murder in which a minister in Rajasthan government was arrested. His team had painstakingly put together charred remains to reconstruct Sheena Bora’s skeletal and facial profile. He also examined the Batla House shooting in Delhi and insisted on a simulation for the first time.