1Associate Professor of, Forensic Sciences, Forensic Science Program, Faculty of Health and Life Sciences, Management and Science University, Shah Alam, Selangor, Malaysia
2Forensic Division, Chemistry Department of Malaysia, Kuching, Sarawak State, East Malaysia
*Corresponding author: T Nataraja Moorthy Associate Professor of, Forensic Sciences, Forensic Science Program, Faculty of Health and Life Sciences, Management and Science University, Shah Alam, Selangor, Malaysia, E-mail: nattrajamoorthy@gmail.com & nataraajan64@msu.edu.my
Online published on 7 February, 2017.
Foot impressions found in crimes form a valuable physical evidence for person identification. Literature review shows that very few studies were conducted to correlate body weight with footprint for crime scene application. Body weight involves a variety of cultural and physical variables. The present study involved 200 Malanau ethnic subjects (100 males and 100 females) mostly residing in east Malaysia and aimed to derive population specific regression equations to determine live body weight from bilateral footprint lengths collected from the consented individuals. Investigation revealed that all footprint lengths exhibit statistically positive significant correlation with body weight (p<0.001). The correlation coefficient (R) in pooled sample (0.242–0.290) is found to be comparatively higher than those of male (0.145–0.215), and female footprints (0.166–0.274). The results were presented in the form of tables. The equations derived for pooled sample can be used even when the sex of the footprint owner remains unknown.
Forensic anthropology, body weight, footprint length, Malanau ethnics, Malaysia
