BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE: The use of conventional methods such as dactylography (study of finger prints) & cheiloscopy (study of lip prints) is of paramount importance, since personal identification by other means such as DNA analysis is sophisticated and not available in rural and developing countries. Fingerprint in its narrow sense is an impression left by the friction ridges of human fingers. The second prints of interest are lip prints. Studies of association between finger print and lip prints are scanty in literature. The present study was aimed to analyze the predominant pattern of lip and finger prints and to identify whether there is any correlation between these two parameters. MATERIALS AND METHODS: The study sample included 300 college students. Brown/pink colored lip stick was applied on the lips and the subject was asked to spread it uniformly over the lips by gentle movement of the lips. The unglazed white paper was then pressed uniformly over the lips. After the fingers were cleaned with tissue paper, the subjects were instructed to roll the tip of their fingers across the surface of an already made ink-stained pad, ensuring that the ink covered the entire pattern area. The inked finger was then enrolled over a white paper to obtain the print and analyzed using magnified hand lens. These prints were examined using magnifying glass, classified, and analyzed. The data was statistically analyzed by using Chi-square test. RESULTS: The percentage distribution of lip print shows that the most frequent lip print pattern in the male is Type I (36.8%) and in female it is type II (34.4%). There is no statistically significant association between the pattern of finger prints and lip prints (p value = 0.9). CONCLUSION: It is known that individual parameters, i.e., lip print and finger print patterns play an important role in forensic identification. Correlation of these two parameters in our study did not show any significant association, hence, these combinations as such cannot be used in individual identification, but rather, they can be used to substantiate facts in crimes where there are few evidences
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