Variations of Left and Right Hand Writers in Forging Signatures Written in Nastaleeq Script

Most frequently in handwriting/signature examination we encounter roman scripts which are written from left to right side. It is imperative to understand the act of signature forgery is not restricted to copying a single class of script. The signature done in other scripts like those which are of opposite directionality to that of roman and similar scripts can also be forged.

For the current study, the Urdu language is taken into consideration which is written in nastaleeq script. Nastaleeq along with the Arabic, Hebrew, Chinese etc. follows the right to left directionality. Since there are many Urdu speaking/writing people in India hence we focused on this script. The study focusses on understanding the significant variation on simulation of Urdu signatures by right and left hand writers. This study is a pilot study on small number of samples. For this purpose, a model signature in nataleeq scripts was given to the participants to practice and forge later on for the simulated forgery.

Various parameters of signature analysis were examined using SPSS and it was observed that there were no significant variations in slant, alignment, blunt start/end, tremors in simulated signatures of left and right hand writers.

Despite of no significant variations in parameters, left writers showed more tremors and missed ‘i’ dots as compared to right hand writers in the sample. In order to get a robust result the sample size should be increased and more parameters should be studied.