new delhi chromosomes of a criminal provide clinching evidence of his involvement in a crime and are increasingly becoming the delight of forensic experts but the method itself called dna fingerprinting is yet to gets its pride of place in indian law says the scientist who has solved many famous cases the dna way dna fingerprinting can be used as a vital input and sometimes the only decisive clue in some of the most complex cases where all other evidence is lost or destroyed but indias archaic evidence act is yet to include it as a proof on which final verdict can be given says dr lalji singh director centre for cellular and molecular biology hyderabad dr singh has visited hundreds of court rooms across the country to be tried as witness and says his experience has been unpleasant and full of suspicion he had even been accused of playing on the ignorance of the judge this technology has mindboggling potential in criminal investigation but then we have to educate the judiciary of its vital import he added and the cases he helped investigate include rajiv gandhi assassination naina sahni murder popularly known as the tandoor murder case exposure of swami premananda and priyanka mattoo murder case dna fingerpriting says singh has nothing to do with fingerprints except that like fingerprints no two persons can have the same dna but in the case of identical twins the dna is the same dna fingerprinting works on a marvellous balancing game of nature namely the fact that each individual inherits its genetic material from his biological parents genes determine the way we are because 46 chromosomes in each of the individuals genes are contributed equally by the father and mother which means that our genes or the building blocks of life consist of 23 chromosomes each from our parents mother cannot give birth to child without contributing 23 of her chromosomes says dr singh that is where the dna probe helps to trace criminals even when you hold a glass through your secretions you leave some dna on it a molecular biologist in search for vital clue can isolate this dna separate its strands take its xray film and use it as a dna probe dna fingerprinting can be compared to a barcoding of items in a supermarket to the naked eye those lines with varying widths mean nothing for the computer sensor however it is a unique identity given to each item same goes for dna using dna as an evidence has many advantages dna is stable and the strands remain intact even after boiling or heating human dna lasts over 40000 to 50000 years characteristics of dna do not change with time and you will get the same dna from all tissues of the same body whether bone hair root liver or fossils which means that to establish that a strand of hair from the crime site belongs to the suspect it can be compared with his fingerprints and