If anyone dare suggest that your seventies are meant to be a time to relax, Rukmani Krishnamurthy would burst out laughing. At 74, the sari-clad forensic investigator, with a red bindi and silver hair, is busy learning new skills to lead a team of experts that helps the police and the public alike.
Born as the sixth child to a PWD official-homemaker couple in Nagpur, Krishnamurthy is India’s first female forensic scientist. “My parents were very open-minded; they always said I should do something for society without any expectation,” she says. That support is what fuelled her decision to take up a job at the Directorate of Forensic Science Laboratories. “After completing my MSc in analytical chemistry, I had three options: to take up a lecturer post in a government institute, to take up a clerk job at the RBI, or to take up the appointment as a scientist at FSL,” she says. “I had the option to stay in Nagpur with either option one or two, but I chose to go to Mumbai.”
On her very first day in office, one of her seniors quipped: “What would a lady do in FSL?” It was the opening shot in a battle she would fight for years. And fight she did.
After handling one of her earliest cases―in which a man poured kerosene on his wife and lit her―she lost sleep for two weeks. “But then my boss said, ‘If you’re going to be fainthearted, you can’t work here because every day you will handle murders, rapes, and burnings,’” she says.
Krishnamurthy took that advice to heart. In the coming years, she worked and helped solve several high-profile cases, including the Joshi-Abhyankar serial murders in the late 1970s, the Mumbai blasts of 1993 and a case of a train fire in 1976 that eventually led to the ban on flammable material like kerosene and petrol on public transport.
During the 1980s and 1990s, Mumbai was plagued by gang wars. Asked if she had faced any threats from the underworld, Krishnamurthy chuckles and says, “No, we never got a direct threat. Most of them [underworld dons] didn’t even know that forensic science existed. They probably thought the police were handling everything.”
In the early 2000s, as director of the Directorate of Forensic Science Laboratories, Maharashtra, she established six world-class laboratories in the state, offering services such as DNA analysis, cyber forensics, speech identification, lie detection, narco-analysis, and brain signature profiling. During this phase, she also realised that many individuals and corporates would rather approach forensic labs directly than go through the police. “So, I visited several countries, including the FBI facilities in the US, to learn about the work being done by authentic forensics labs,” she says. “Finally, after retiring from government service, I established Helik Advisory, which is now a recognised centre by the National Forensic Sciences University in Gandhinagar. We follow the same standard operating procedures used in government forensic labs. Over the years, we have handled numerous high-profile economic, digital, and other types of crimes referred to us by the police.”
Krishnamurthy is particularly enthusiastic about how her team’s work is benefiting ordinary people. She recounts a recent case where they resolved a misunderstanding between a husband and wife using one of their tests. “The husband, a scientist working in a dye company, had a pink stain on his shirt,” she says. “This bothered his pregnant wife, causing her stress and high blood pressure. We suggested that this could be resolved with a polygraph test. He brought his wife to us, and we explained the test to her. During the test, we asked him all the questions that were troubling her. His innocence was proven, and the very next day her blood pressure returned to normal.”
Krishnamurthy’s life is littered with such nuggets, some of which might be seen on the big screen soon; actor-producer Harman Baweja has already bought the rights to her story.
A CHANGE I WOULD LIKE TO SEE
“There is currently no mechanism in place to assess whether a person is a genuine forensic expert or not. Therefore, the need of the hour is the establishment of a forensics council, where practising forensic experts can register, and their qualifications, testing capabilities and laboratory setup can be monitored.”