Authors: Kumar P, Sharma P and Bhandari D*
Examination of inks is an important aspect of questioned documents. In the present study, a non-destructive examination of inks was done owing to their different compositions namely, colorants, vehicles, solvents, dyes, resins, pigments, etc. This offers a chance for the questioned document examiner to individualize the ink when its authenticity and writer’s ownership, period of writing, or placement of ink on paper and individualization is under scrutiny. This is helpful in cases of threats, blackmail, kidnapping, suicide, ink-back dating, fake cheques and other cases. Conventionally, ink examination has been happening using TLC, HPLC, LC-MS, GC-MS, etc. In this paper, VSC-8000 has been used owing to its in-built micro-spectrophotometric modality, as it offers a non-destructive method to determine the absorbance and help individualize inks. For the present study Ball, Gel, Fiber tip pen, Sketch pen and Pencil of five different colors were used. Even bubbles on white paper were made and using VSC-8000 absorbance was noted for the visible length range. The results showed promising differentiation among the absorbance for different colors and pens. A lot more can be done by making a database library and exploring the absorbance under different VSC-based micro-spectrophotometric modalities. This method is clean, non-destructive, time-saving and userfriendly.
Keywords: VSC-8000; Ink Examination; Questioned Documents; Non-Destructive Technique
