Can the dead tell their stories? In the hands of a good forensic surgeon, they certainly can.

First published in 2010 in Malayalam as Oru Police Surgeonte Ormakkurippukal, Dead Men Tell Tales is the bestselling memoir of Kerala’s most famous forensic surgeon, Dr B. Umadathan. Popularly known as the ‘Sherlock Holmes of Kerala’, Dr Umadathan revisits some of his strangest and most interesting cases, like the Chacko murder masterminded by Sukumara Kurup; the sensational Polakkulam case; and the baffling Panoor Soman case. Chilling, shocking, and, at times, downright bizarre, Dead Men Tell Tales is unputdownable. Here is an extract -

Merely conducting the post-mortem wouldn’t satisfy me. I would accompany the investigating officers to the spot and try to collect evidence. I was quite interested in helping them solve cases. The officers were only happy to include me, but I know that some of my colleagues felt that I was trying to slip into the shoes of investigators.

The medico-legal investigations that I was doing were nothing new. In the US, forensic surgeons, known as medical examiners, were involved in every stage of the investigation. I believe that a scientific inquiry is a collaborative effort. The police officer, forensic surgeon, forensic scientist, fingerprint expert and photographer are all involved in the process of crime detection. I will narrate a few cases that are clearly etched in my memory.

Sri Shanmugha Das and Sri Yousuf Kunju were dynamic crime branch officers. Das later died of a heart attack while he was DSP. Yousuf retired as SP and has settled down in Trivandrum. Once, Yousuf called to inform that the body of a murdered man had been found lying by the roadside in Kilimanoor. He had completed the inquest and the body was being sent to me for a post-mortem. By afternoon, the body reached the mortuary. It was a forty-year-old male. The post-mortem revealed that a wound on his head had led to death. The wound was on the side of his head, and was the size of a one-rupee coin. It was a depressed fracture. There was a blood clot in the brain.

A depressed fracture is identified from the shape and depth of the wound. These indicators also help to identify the size and type of the weapon used to inflict the wound. I initially thought that he had been hit with a hammer. But then I saw the tread marks of a car tyre on his shoulder. I recorded the pattern and the size of the marks. Shanmugha Das and Yousuf Kunju had come to watch the post-mortem. I showed them the wounds and the marks. In the afternoon, the three of us went to the spot where the body had been found.

It had been lying at the juncture of a sharp turn on the left side of a tarred road between Madathara and Kilimanoor. There was blood where the body was found. A lady who lived in a house in the vicinity had seen the man the previous evening at the spot and had heard a scream shortly thereafter. In the morning, she saw his body.

I felt that the round wound on his head had been caused by some part of the car that had hit him. I had travelled to the spot in an old Ambassador car. The bumper was joined to the mudguard on either side, and was held in place by two bolts that jutted out and were circular in shape. I found the bolts were the same size as the wound on his head. To recreate the scene, we made a man sit on the left side of the road at the turn. We measured the distance from the surface of the road to the wound on the head above the left ear. This matched the distance from the bolt on the car. Later, as we sat in a tiny shop across the road drinking lemonade, Das and Yousuf learnt something from the shopkeeper that seemed quite trivial, but it helped us to solve the case. This is what he told us: ‘Last evening, Shahul, a taxi driver from Kilimanoor, who drove an Ambassador car, stopped to buy a cigarette. The car’s left headlight wasn’t working, but he drove the one-eyed car away. Chettiyar, who lives in the neighbourhood, was waiting at the bus stop and got into Shahul’s car.’

We returned to the spot. It was quite dark by then. We recreated the scene once more. We asked a man to sit at the sharp turn. We disconnected the head light on the left and drove the car slowly from Madathara towards Kilimanoor. We realized that without the left headlight it was difficult to see the man sitting on the roadside.

We returned to Kilimanoor and saw an Ambassador parked in front of a small workshop. The grill of the workshop was shut, which was unusual. We stopped the car near the workshop and spotted a young man working inside. We called out to him and asked him who the Ambassador belonged to. He said a man called Shahul had brought the car yesterday and asked him to wash it thoroughly, but hadn’t come to collect his car. We felt that the case had reached a turning point.

I measured the size of the bolts on the car. They matched the shape and size of the wound. Then we checked the tread marks of the left tyre. They looked similar in size and shape to the marks on the body. When we examined the bolt using a lens, we found traces of blood on it. The man’s blood had been collected during the post-mortem, so we could see if the blood group matched. I felt that if it matched, we would get a strong link that would help us solve the case. We got Shahul’s address from the workshop and went to his house in Thattathumala. He was not at home. He had gone out the previous day and hadn’t yet returned.

Then we questioned Chettiyar, who had gotten into Shahul’s car, and we found that our assumptions were correct. Chettiyar had sat on the left side. The headlight was not working. The car was moving fast and Chettiyar said that it had struck something at a sharp turn on the road and that he had heard a scream. Though he had heard that someone had been found dead in Madathara, Chettiyar had not spoken to anyone about this incident.

On hearing that the police had come to his house, Shahul went to the crime branch office the next day and confessed. All our assumptions were proven right

By spending a few hours in the evening investigating the crime, we were able to solve the mystery. This proves that any investigation will be successful if we are sincere and committed.

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