Virtual autopsies to be conducted at AIIMS

According to Dr Chittaranjan Behera, Associate Professor of Forensic Medicine at AIIMS, it is easy to track foreign objects like bullets and pellets through this technology.

"Deeply lodged bullets and firearm pellets which enter the body and get entangled in the muscles and bones poses a great challenge while extracting it during post mortem.

"But these virtual films will show the exact position of the bullets as well as pellets and thus could be extracted easily. If the extraction meant mutilation of the body, then the bullet doesn't require to be extracted as the film will have the same evidential value as the extracted bullet," Dr Behera said.
Dr Gupta said that this cutting edge technology will play

an important role in identification and estimation of age where only the skeletal remains are recovered.

Referring to the Nithari case in which several skeletons were recovered, Dr Gupta recalled that it took over two months to conduct their examination.

"It was a herculean task for the AIIMS Forensic department as more than three dozens skeletal remains were examined. It took over two months because of non-availability of the radiological unit. The same could be now done in couple of days," Dr Gupta said.

He also referred to a recent case of a 15-month-old boy whose body was flown to India from Saudi Arabia and had undergone two post-mortems.

"Natural death was cited by Saudi authorities but the deceased's family was not satisfied as they were suspecting homicide. The new technology revealed that his death was due to hanging," he said.