Fifteen days after the heinous alleged rape and murder of three sisters in Lakhani village in Bhandara district of Maharashtra, the police probe has reached a dead end. In a stinging report, this newspaper exposed how the doctors who conducted the autopsy were not qualified forensic experts, resulting in the police reaching the wrong conclusion.

The general public and the media, unaware of the police botch-up in the case, assumed that the three sisters may have been raped and then murdered. In the end, this may not be the case. However, the incident hit national and international headlines, was debated hotly in the media, candle-light marches were held, and the state chief minister even announced a Rs 10 lakh compensation to the family. But no one has bothered to question the police officers on the shoddy probe. Even if the motto of forensic science is that the “dead do tell tales”, investigators in India seldom use it to detect crime and bring culprits to justice.