‘Sheena’s pics doctored to prove skull was hers’

The lawyer of Peter Mukerjea — one of the prime accused in the Sheena Bora murder case — on Thursday accused the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS)

The lawyer of Peter Mukerjea — one of the prime accused in the Sheena Bora murder case — on Thursday accused the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) expert — who conducted superimposition of a skull exhumed by the Khar police in 2015 — of morphing her photos in order to prove that the skull was hers.

HT Image

During his cross-examination by Mukerjea’s lawyer, Shrikant Shivde, on Thursday, the AIIMS expert, professor SK Tripathi, was asked how the superimposition process was conducted to match the image of the skull clicked by him with Bora’s photographs. Shivde alleged that photos of Bora and the exhumed skull were cropped and later stretched to obtain the “desired result”. He pointed out there were some points and lines visible in yellow and red, respectively, on the superimposition software, which, according to him, were an indication that the process had been “doctored”.

Earlier in court, the expert had demonstrated how he conducted the superimposition. He claimed that he had first uploaded Bora’s pictures on the software. Later, according to the angles of the face in the photograph, pictures of the skull were taken and uploaded with the corresponding photos of Bora. The expert had later said that during the process, he had to select points on Bora’s face in her pictures which would reflect on the picture of the skull.

The software later superimposed Bora’s picture on the skull’s image, based on which they analysed if the image of the victim matched with that of the skull. However, Shivde accused the expert of using a method which is not advanced to obtain the desired result, despite the fact that better technologies were available for the purpose.