As a part of Words of Wisdom series, the Department of Forensic Sciences, School of Sciences, Jain (Deemed-to-be University) organized a session on “Forensic Odontology, A Bird’s View” on 21 July 2017 in the college premises by Dr. Deepak V, who is a dentist.
Beginning the presentation with beautiful lines “Look deep into nature and you will find all the answers”, Dr. Deepak briefed about Forensic Odontology, which is a branch of dentistry in the interest of justice. The speaker said that branch deals with the proper handling and examination of dental evidence and presentation of dental findings in the court of law.
The speaker pointed out the key areas of Forensic Odontology which includes postmortem dental identification, profiling, and reconstructive dental identification. These key areas are helpful in differentiating between populations, sex based on the tooth size, age estimation, stature prediction and can be used to estimate the height of individual and bite mark investigation (Nirbhaya’s case).
The speaker focused on the divisions of Forensic Odontology which includes criminal, non-criminal and research. The very first case to use Forensic Odontology was in 1897 AD (charity bazaar fire in Paris) where individuals were recognized by their dental findings.
In his talk, he also mentioned that in India in the year 2000, the initiation of the Indian Association of Forensic Odontology (IAFO) was started.
The speaker enlightened on the identification of teeth which are important as it stays intact. The calcium and phosphate crystals help them to last long as the dead body encountered may be decayed, burnt or skeletonized. Least reliable methods employed for identification or visual recognition are by accompanying persons and personal effect scientific methods like medical conditions, photography, serological methods etc.
The informative talk concluded with a Q&A session along with the felicitation to the speaker by the coordinator of the Department of Forensic Sciences.
