MUMBAI: The state police can now bank on a forensic tool to achieve speedy convictions. For the first time in Maharashtra, life sentences were meted out to the accused based on the findings of Brain Electrical Oscillation Signature (BEOS) profiling. Reports of these tests, conducted at the state forensic lab in Kalina, were held admissible in sessions courts in two brutal cases of murder.

Last month, MBA students Aditi Sharma and her lover Pravin Khandelwal were pronounced guilty by a Pune sessions court for conspiring to murder a fellow student. The deceased, Udit Bharati, was Aditi's ex-boyfriend and was poisoned with ' prasad ' laced with arsenic. In January, a supari shop employee Amin Bhoi was convicted by the Sewri sessions court for hammering his colleague to death and robbing the shop.

Both Aditi and Amin underwent BEOS tests and the findings clearly indicated their involvement in the murders. Both convictions were announced within 14 months of the arrests. During BEOS profiling, an accused is asked not to give answers verbally; experiential knowledge is retrieved from his brain. Experiential knowledge is acquired only through participation in an event, leading the person to have an experience of that activity. The technique detects and differentiates whether the accused was actually involved in committing a crime or only learnt of it. It helps in the reconstruction of events.

"BEOS involves the application of electro-encephalogram. Electrodes are attached to different parts of the brain to detect electrical activation in the brain. The accused is asked to wear a cap with 32 electrodes, of which two are placed on each earlobe and rest on various parts of the brain. Probes (short questions) are recorded in a computer and presented to an accused. He is asked to sit with eyes closed and listen to the probes," director of the state forensic lab, Rukmani Krishnamurthy, told TOI.

The probes would evoke remembrance of the experience that the accused would have had. Such remembrance is accompanied by extensive changes in the electrical oscillation pattern in the brain. No manual analysis is involved in this system.

Findings of the BEOS test conducted on Aditi revealed the presence of experiential knowledge on probes depicting her having an affair with Udit, taking admission with him at an MBA institute in Wakad (Pune), having some inter-personal conflict with Udit and therefore, both of them not speaking to each other much. It was also found in the BEOS profiling that Aditi knew Udit was not happy about her relationship with Pravin.

Aditi was found to have experiential knowledge for having a plan to murder Udit by giving him arsenic. Experiential knowledge was also found of her having gone to a temple to collect 'prasad', buying arsenic from a shop, calling up Udit and giving him the poison-laced 'prasad'.

Emotional experience of getting relieved and scared in connection with giving the arsenic laced 'prasad' to Udit was also found present on the BEOS test. Aditi also underwent a lie-detector test, which revealed deception on all relevant questions. The judgment copy dedicates about 10 pages on how the BEOS technique was conducted.

In the second case at Chembur, Amin was accused of hammering his colleague Ramdullar Singh to death while the latter was asleep in the 'supari' shop where the duo worked. A 'sattur' (sharp weapon used to break open coconuts) was used in the killing. Reports of Amin's BEOS tests were positive. The Sewri sessions court, which convicted Amin, also observed that his intention was clearly to murder Singh so that robbing the shop would be easier. Mumbai crime branch chief Rakesh Maria said that while BEOS was a useful technique of examination, it couldn't achieve conviction all by itself. "The technique needs to be corroborated with other evidence," Maria said.

In Mumbai, BEOS profiling was conducted on an accused in the sensational Aarushi Talwar murder case. Vijay Mandal, a house help of the Talwars' neighbour, was brought to the Kalina forensic lab on June 29 by the CBI. Recently, the British Psychology Society organised a seminar on BEOS, where experts from the Kalina lab presented a paper.

nitasha.natu@timesgroup.com