Medico-Legal Journal最新文献

Children who experience violence are more prone to develop high-risk behaviour, mental illness and anxiety disorder. Nepalese law is against any form of physical violence but corporal punishment by parents on children continues in patriarchal Nepalese society. We describe a case of a young boy who attempted suicide twice due to maltreatment and discuss the legal and social issues involved.

Atractylis gummifera L. is a wild poisonous plant found in rural areas around the Mediterranean. It is also available from herbalists. This plant has a liver tropism which can be fatal whether taken orally or transcutaneously.In this case report, we report and discuss the clinical, biological and autopsy data of one case of poisoning of a small child in Morocco with a view to raising awareness of this dangerous poisonous glue thistle especially when used transcutaneously.

Blast injuries can be caused by pressurised containers like gas cylinders, tyres, etc., and are commonly associated with wars and terrorist attacks. The injuries suffered will depend on the type of explosion, for example from shock wave, burns and fractures, which mainly affect the lungs and hollow organs. Accurately noting the nature and extent of any blast injuries suffered will help to explain the patho-mechanism of these injuries. We report a case of 49-year-old pedestrian who sustained bomb blast injuries at a mobile phone tower office in Nepal. An improvised explosive device was used in the attack. All the peculiarities and typical features of blast injuries were evident at autopsy and may provide useful information for researchers studying explosive-related deaths.

On 20 April 2022 the Sessions Court of Greater Mumbai sentenced a postpartum depressed woman to lifetime imprisonment for abandoning and murdering her twin girl child (In re: The State of Maharashtra). In the absence of a diagnosis or treatment for postpartum depression at the time when the crime was committed, a plea of insanity was denied. This article considers how the absence of services for perinatal mental health in India may challenge the delivery of criminal justice in cases of infanticide.

In Nepal, police inquests have several limitations. When they receive information about a death, the police visit the crime scene and write an inquest report. Then, they arrange for the body to be autopsied. However, most autopsies are performed by medical officers in government hospitals who lack specialised training in conducting autopsies. Although all Nepalese medical schools teach forensic medicine to undergraduate students and require them to witness some autopsies, most private institutions are not authorised to perform them. Autopsies performed without expertise can be subpar and, even when trained personnel are available, these facilities are inadequately equipped. In addition, there is a lack of sufficient manpower to provide expert medico-legal services. The Honourable Judges and District Attorneys of all district courts believe that the medico-legal reports prepared by the doctors are inappropriate, incomplete and inadequate for use as evidence in court. Moreover, the police are more concerned with establishing criminality than other aspects of medico-legal death investigation, such as autopsies. Therefore, the quality of medico-legal investigations, including death investigations, will not improve until government stakeholders recognise the importance of forensic medicine in the judiciary and for the resolution of crimes.

The Covid-19 pandemic has created exceptional challenges for patients and medical care systems. Among many factors influencing postponed cancer diagnosis, mask-wearing created difficulties in initial diagnosis of head and neck tumours. This report features a patient who had been covering a submandibular tumour under a surgical mask for more than 6 months. He visited his general practitioner due to a significant weight loss, but he neither took his mask off, nor was he asked to do so. When he reported to our emergency room, we noticed a massive ulcerous mass in the right submandibular region. Histological examination confirmed primary squamocellular carcinoma of submandibular salivary gland. During the Covid-19 pandemic, significant clinical observations may be missed if a surgical mask or respirator are not removed during examination with the potential for increased incidence of medical malpractice claims.

The use of helium in plastic bag suffocation is a suicide method recently found in forensic cases. Although it is not common practice, there has been a strong increase in its use during the past 20 years, thanks to the accessibility of information on the web and materials needed to implement it. From a pathophysiological point of view, there are various theories on how helium can change the timing and, also, the cause of death when the head is inside a plastic bag. We report two cases where we believe that the action of helium, whose unequivocal use is demonstrated by the circumstantial data, has unfolded in a different way. In the first case, the discovery of an intense cyanosis of the face, blood leakage from the respiratory orifices and the destruction of numerous alveolar septa with histologically demonstrated blood extravasation, was left for a longer agonic period and a no negligible rate of pulmonary barotrauma in determination of death. In the second case, the total absence of external pathological phenomena, internal and histological, allows us to hypothesise an onset of death that is faster and catalysed by helium and explained by the known sympathetic hyperactivation and consequent cardiac arrhythmic death described in similar plastic bag suffocation cases.

The disorder of internet gaming is increasingly being blamed on major psychological problems affecting youth. Action video games are enjoyable for masochists. Video game chores that practise bondage and other acts that cause pain and anoxia may be masochistic in nature in order to promote player satisfaction. Asphyxia will result in pleasure in asphyxiophilia, a dangerous and occasionally lethal form of sexual masochism. Constriction of the neck with ligature materials is a frequent method of causing hypoxia. The subject of this case study was a compulsive player of online video games. During the masochistic act, along with a recording of it, he unintentionally died. Given that he was naked, had a ligature around his neck, had his wrists and legs bound, and had two fabric-holding clamps on his scrotum, asphyxiophilia was determined to be the cause of his death. At the scene of death, neither pornographic materials nor proof of frequent use of this kind of behaviour were discovered. Along with recording, the subject's cell phone's flash was on to help with the dim lighting and he may have been videotaping these masochistic acts as part of a videogame task. The results of the autopsy, circumstantial evidence, police inquiry and witness accounts all support accidental death.