P K Sumodan is working as District Malaria Officer of Wayanad District in Kerala. His area of specialization is entomology. His fields of study, for the last one decade, have been mosquitoes and malaria. He writes popular science articles in English as well as Malayalam. Besides science, English poetry is his area of interest..

Insects are increasingly being used to trace absconding murderers. A fascinating branch of insect science (entomology) – forensic entomology – is introduced in this article.

In 1235 AD, a small village in China witnessed a murder by slashing. The local investigator who was deputed to probe the crime inferred a sharp sickle as the weapon used. He asked the villagers to bring their sickles to one spot and lay them out before the crowd. To the surprise of the villagers, flies were attracted to only one, otherwise innocent-looking, sickle. On rigorous interrogation the owner of that sickle confessed to the gruesome crime. It was explained later that the attractants on the sickle were small traces of human flesh invisible to the naked eye. This was the first recorded use of insects in the investigation of a crime, and this use of insects has caught on in the world of forensics only in the past 20 years or so. However, in developed countries like USA, forensic entomology has today gained a prominent place in crime investigation.

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Address for Correspondence
P K Sumodan
District Malaria Officer,
District Medical Office of
Health Mananthavady,
Wayanad Kerala 670 635, India.
Email: sumodan@indiatimes.com