Sailaja KR had not dreamt of joining the police force, let alone becoming a fingerprint expert, when she went about taking her Masters in Science and Bachelors in Education. In the mid-90s, she simply applied to the police department and got in. Before she knew it, she was in the team of fingerprints experts, becoming the first woman to do so in Kerala. A few days ago, after finishing 26 years in service, Sailaja retired from the force as Deputy Director of the Kerala State Fingerprint Bureau. Again, she was the first woman to reach that post.
“Honestly I have never felt any different treatment at work because I am a woman. Once you are in, there is no difference between the genders in terms of the kind of work you do. I got no special advantage or consideration because I am a woman. I was also never kept away from work,” Sailaja tells TNM.
Even though fingerprinting had not been on her mind before, she developed a new interest for it once she joined the force. “It is unique, as you know, no two people will have the same set of prints. As a fingerprint expert, your job is to inspect a crime scene, collect whatever fingerprints you could gather, and then match it against the police’s database of criminals. If you find a match, you report it, and when the police submit the charge sheet, the fingerprint report will also be filed. You may then be called in court to give your expert opinion during the trial of the case,” Sailaja says, detailing the job.
Systems changed in the two and a half decades she worked in the bureau. It turned digital at one point. If earlier, they only had “light and lens” as their tools, digitisation brought everything online. “Earlier the database was stored at district level. Now a single server contains fingerprint records of the entire state. If necessary, we can also compare it with fingerprints in other states,” Sailaja shares.
Sailaja's send off in Thiruvananthapuram
Over these years, she went from being a ‘searcher’ in the field to the state deputy director post that she retired from. She worked in Wayanad, Idukki, her hometown Kottayam, and Thiruvananthapuram. Like a true officer, she is reluctant to share police stories of crimes the fingerprinting had helped solve. Not at liberty to give names, she says. Also, it used to be mostly theft cases than murders that she had worked with, she adds.
Pressed, Sailaja speaks of a murder case in Kottayam of a couple from Odisha who were running a rubber mat firm there. “It was late in the night when the police were informed of the crime, but our science team managed to reach before dawn and collect the fingerprints and other details. We could make out from the crime scene that it was strangulation, and there were clues pointing to the murder being committed by non-Malayalis. We could find matching fingerprints for one of the four accused the police had rounded up, and this became strong evidence for the prosecution.”
On May 31, Sailaja was given a sendoff by the department in Thiruvananthapuram, with Additional director general of police (ADGP) K Padmakumar giving her a memento on the occasion.