Linkage of fired cartridges with the suspect firearm connects the crime with the criminal's firearm. It provides invaluable evidentiary clue, even when there is no eye witness. The importance of firearm evidence is now no secret to seasoned and educated criminals. They often attempt to destroy the evidentiary clues by tampering the gun , by making the gun unserviceable etc. In such cases, modified techniques are adopted to obtain proper tests from the available tampered/unserviceable gun. It poses problem if the firearm even in tampered/unserviceable condition is not available. In a murder case, the accused, after committing the crime broke his SBBL gun into pieces and after putting them into fire disposed of the remains in the flowing water of a river. The accused had used his licensed 12 bore SBBL gun. The day after the commission of crime, he reported to the Police that his licensed gun was stolen. Three 12 bore cartridges, fired from the gun were recovered from the place of occurrence They were sent to the laboratory for safe custody. But, as expected, the suspect gun could not be recovered. Despite best efforts, the investigating agencies could not recover even parts of the gun. Therefore, the question of obtaining test impressions without the suspect gun did not arise resulting into ignoring of an important link in connecting the crime with the criminal through his licensed gun. The present communication describes a solution to the problem, adopted in this case. The accused had purchased the gun much earlier to the commission of the crime. It was obvious that the gun must not have been used only once for committing the said crime. He must have used his gun for practice/trial firing if not for birds sporting or for any other purposes. Such fired cartridges are not always thrown, rather, persons holding licensed gun usually preserve fired cartridges, specially in our country where licensing policy for obtaining live cartridges is also very stringent. Therefore, it was expected that a few fired cartridges must be in the possession of the accused. Keeping this in view the house of the accused was searched. A number of empty cartridges were recovered from the possession of the accused. Evidently, they were fired from his licensed gun. They were treated as test cartridges fired from the suspect gun, though they were not fired in the laboratory. The characteristic marks present on the empty cartridges found at the crime scene were compared with the characteristic marks present on the empty cartridges recovered from the house of the accused. On thorough examination and comparison it was observed that the marks were similar in their individual characteristics which led to the positive conclusion that the crime cartridges found at the crime scene had been fired from the same gun which fired the cartridges whose empties were recovered from the house of the accused. Thus, the use of the licensed gun of the accused could be established beyond doubt even though the gun was destroyed and not available for test purposes. Consultation/Enquiry:--Mail to Author
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