INTRODUCTION TO ALTERATION / TAMPERING IN

DOCUMENTS

Richard C. Kashindye
Assistant Lecturer in Forensic Science
UDOM
 ALTERATION/ TAMPERING

 These are the forms of any modification or changes induced in the original document.

 Documents are altered for various reasons, ranging from simple corrections to intentional fraud.

 Change made to a legal document alters the sense and message of the document and hence
affecting its validity.

 The altered documents may include checks, wills, contracts, marksheets, attendance sheets,
receipts, railway tickets etc.
 TYPES OF ALTERATIONS

 Addition
 Deletion
 Obliteration
 Page substitution

 Overwritings
 ADDITION

 Inserting additional of strokes, characters or even

the whole page in the original documents

 Raised cheques, drafts, commercial papers etc., are

altered by adding figure zero or by changing “1” to
“4”, “1” to “7”, “3” to “8”, “0” to “8” and by adding
“ty” to “Six”, “Seven”, “Eight”, “Nine” etc.

 Additions of Handwritten or typewritten text over

genuine signatures.

 Sometimes the whole page is added into the existing

document, called page insertion.
 DELETION

 This is an act of removing the writings from the writing surface by using erasures.

 Erasures can be of two types:

Mechanical erasure.

 Removing the writings on the abrasion of surface of paper with the help of rubber, sharp
instrument such as razor blade, scalper, knife

Chemical erasure.

 Chemical is used to alters the dyes in the ink so that they are no longer visible such as Sodium
hypochlorite Potassium permanganate and Oxalic acid.

 The erasure can be deciphered under oblique light or UV light and the more advanced technique
used in detection is VSC
 OBLITERATION

 Covering the original writing/typewriting/printed

matter with some ink or any opaque material to make
the writings invisible or undecipherable..

 Application of correction fluid to paint over mistaken

matter.

 Application of chemical such as oxidizing agent

which produce colorless when applied to ink.

 Such type of documents can be deciphered under

transmitted, IR, UV and oblique lighting conditions
 OVERWRITINGS

 Writings made on the top of pre existing

writings.
 The original writings can be deciphered under
transmitted, oblique, UV or sometimes IR
lighting conditions.
 PAGE SUBSTITUTION

 Removing the existing page from the document

and replacing it with new fraudulently produced
page.
 The forgery can be detected by examining the
indentation marks, watermarks on substituted
page.
 The physical matching of the paper sometime
yields desired results.