Keya Dharamvir is no ordinary Indian physicist. Her reputation as a researcher of Punjab University and her work on nanosciences is not just the end of the list. More than her area of expertise, it is her approach and application of science, that makes her stand out more.
Professor Dharamvir, despite her inexperience in criminal experience, decided to help a friend, whose daughter was killed by goons. And she, braving all odds, visited the site of the crime, and using her scientific principles picked up clues, that helped the case change from an accident to murder.
The victim in the case was a young lawyer, daughter of Dr, Keya Dharamvie’s friend in the Chemistry department. “A lawyer walked into my office and told me that his daughter had been run over by a car and he needed to prove in court that it was intentionally done.
Now we have simulations for such cases but back then I had to do a methodical analysis of the data available to prove the case,” she says. On being eve teased on the night, the young lawyer has decided to protest. For this, the goons ran over her and killed her. This was treated initially as an accident. However, when Prof. Dharamvir visited the site, by logic and scientific deductions pointed out what the evidence was pointing at. The absence of tire marks and break marks proved that the incident was intentional and not an accident.
To many of us, who have watched crime television dramas, this approach is not new or groundbreaking. But the case in discussion happened in the 1990s and then use methods and approaches were new and unheard of. After she helped the case, she says, “a day after the judgment, when I went to class, I received a standing ovation from my classmates and it was a good feeling.”