Anil Garg

By Anil Garg and Nisha Goyal

Every human corpse is unique. There are different religions in different parts of the world which adopt a variety of ways to dispose of corpses. Dead bodies can be found unattended, dug up, mutilated by the perpetrators of crimes, and eaten by wild animals in lonely unattended places. In these situations, forensic anthropologists or anatomists are consulted by the state authorities to help them to provide justice to the deceased person. The first and foremost scientific information desired by authorities is identification of the corpse, cause of death of the human body and weapon used, if applicable. Identification can be done by studying the bones of the human corpse during autopsy examination and if unknown skeletal remains are all that is available, examination of each bone is required. Forensic anthropologists or pathologists are asked to identify race, sex and age as important parameters of the identification. In this chapter, we will enumerate various parameters for identification. We will discuss race, age and sex from various bones as part of forensic oesteology.

Part of the book: Forensic Analysis

By Nisha Goyal and Anil Garg

The word autopsy is formed from two Greek words, Autos and Optos. The meaning of the word Autos is self and the word Optos is seen. Thus, autopsy means seeing of self. An autopsy is of two types. Medicolegal Autopsy and Histopathological or Clinical Autopsy. In this chapter, we mainly focus on the Medicolegal autopsy, what is the aim of the autopsy. What are the prerequisites of the autopsy? Where medicolegal autopsy can be carried out? Who can carry out the autopsy. What are the different incisions of doing a medico-legal autopsy? We also discuss which viscera are to persevere in different autopsy procedures and which trace elements are to be collected in common medicolegal autopsies. How viscera and trace evidence collected from the dead body are preserved. We will also discuss, in brief, the preservatives used.

Part of the book: Autopsy