Journal of Forensic Research

Personal Identification using Cheiloscopy in South India

Abstract

Peter Kiran A, Swetha Murthy Sharma, Dakshinamurthy Sridevi, Almeida Myfanwy Alonza and Mahemaa R

Lip prints are an important form of transfer evidence, establishing the connection between a person and the crime scene and with the parallel increase in the sophistication in crime it is necessary to apply less known techniques like Cheiloscopy. The aim of this study is to find out the most and least common lip print pattern in males and females residing in South India and to study the extent of similarity among lip print patterns of twins and siblings residing in South India. The study was conducted on 50 pairs of twins and 50 pairs of siblings out of which 90 were males and 110 were females. The samples were collected using two methods – lipstick method and black powder development method. The most common lip print pattern was found to be Type II- Branched Pattern in both males (42.2%) and females (43.63%) and the least common pattern was found to be Type III- Intersected Pattern in both males (5.55%) and females (2.72%) in the South Indian Region. There was no correlation between the extent of similarity of lip print patterns among twins and siblings in the South Indian region.