Why one person can appear as eight people in a case file

## The problem A single individual can appear across investigative records under many spellings — a maiden name, a legal name used in court, a variant used inside company email threads, and casual short forms. Left unmerged, each spelling becomes its own node in the entity graph. The network chart shows eight strangers where the case has one person; counts inflate; edges do not connect; and the confidence of every downstream finding drops. ## What we saw in HRPM-DTH20160 During a recent review of the Danish Thanvi case dossier, the same individual was stored under eight name variants: Noreen Danish, Noreen Kesar, Noreen Qaisar, Noureen Qaisar, Noreen Qaiser, Norren Danish, Norren, and Noreen. Three of those spellings appear in court filings, two in operational email threads at Background Check Group, and the rest in narrative event descriptions. The forensic entity table had already flagged the duplication but had not merged the rows. ## Why this matters for court-ready reports A court-admissible report has to survive cross-examination. If the Evidence Register lists “Noreen Qaisar” as the account holder for an IP address and the Actor Intelligence Table lists “Noreen Danish” as a former director of the same company, the reader has to do the reconciliation. Opposing counsel will do it first, and the reconciliation gap becomes the cross-examination. ## How we fixed it We chose one canonical entity, attached the other seven spellings as verified aliases, and rewrote the case-scoped relationship edges to point at the canonical node. The Actor Intelligence Table now renders one row with a documented aliases list. The network graph now shows one node with correct in- and out-degree. ## Rules the platform now enforces 1. Every relationship edge is tagged verified or inferred, with a reason. 2. Every asserted role (e.g. Managing Director) with no HR or board document behind it is flagged Evidence Required rather than rendered as fact. 3. Every alias carries a source note so a reviewer can trace how the spelling entered the corpus. ## Takeaway Entity resolution is not a cosmetic clean-up. It is a credibility control. In a case file that already carries FIRs, court orders, and corporate signatory records, an unmerged name variant is a citation gap waiting to be found.