Quiet a Handful

With Dr RK Garg,former head,Department of Forensic Science,Punjabi University,Patiala,as her guide,“I took 600 samples of students of Class XI and XII and of the working class from Punjab and Haryana,” she says before sharing the findings. “Research pointed out that almost 40 per cent of the rural people do not write with well-defined curves and that their alphabets have tapering terminals. On the other hand,more than 96 per cent of urban folk have well-defined curves in the alphabets,” Dr Anand also states that while 83 per cent of the rural people use a combination of their finger-cum-wrist while writing,89 per cent of urban people use their wrist-cum-forearm.

Elaborating on the impact of socio-economic background on handwriting,connectivity of strokes,pen pressure,shading skill and line quality,Dr Anand says that while an urbanite would write in a single flow,a rural person follows a ‘breaking’ pattern. Handling criminal and civil cases in district court as well as the High Court,Dr Anand feels the research will now benefit in the forensic field. “We receive several documents for investigation. Her study will help us in both criminal and civil cases. While,at the scene of crime,any document left behind can be carefully studied,in civil cases it will help us work on anonymous complaints and letters. As with identification of a person’s background,the investigative procedure can be narrowed down to a large extent,” chips in Dr Garg.