Study of Prevalence of Pattern Arch in Right Index Finger of Indian Males for Assisting Fingerprint Analysts in Expediting Criminal Identification

The basic fingerprint patterns were described by Dr. Francis Galton in his book-Fingerprints, published in 1892, but prior to that Dr. Henry Faulds, in 1880, had promulgated the idea of linking visible Scene of Crime prints with the perpetrator, and recording of impressions on paper. The thumb and the index of the dominant hand are the most used fingers for accomplishing routine to explicit tasks, thus the latents found at the place of occurrence, often include these two digits. The initial process of criminal identification involves recording suspects' prints, and their comparison with the lifted latent/s. If the pattern of the latent/s is decipherable, then the expert uses it as a clue, to exclude or include exemplars. However, the chance prints are usually partial, and in the absence of fixed points, it is particularly difficult to distinguish between a whorl and a loop pattern. As there are no recurves, core and delta, it's relatively easier to recognise the pattern arch from a fraction of the latent. Thus, having better indication of prevalence of arches in Right Index (RI) finger of Indian males, can assist the analysts in expediting the process of identification, by reducing the numbers of specimen slips/cards to be included for comparison. In this study 2000 fingerprints, or 200 ten-digit fingerprint slips were examined to calculate the prevalence of arches in adult Indian males. There were 77 numbers, or 3.85% arches, detected in 2000 prints, and their percentage frequency in RI finger of 200 subjects was 10.00%.