Background: The profiling of medicolegal cases is necessary in order to prevent the preventable casualties in future and to study the genuine crime rate in the area. Nowadays, road traffic accidents cause most of the casualties, which lead to many deaths.
Objective: To set up a profile of deaths owing to natural or unnatural causes, so that we can direct rigorous efforts to curb their incidence.
Materials and Methods: We retrospectively studied the death cases brought for medicolegal postmortem examination at the Mortuary, Government Medical College, Surat, Gujarat, India, in the year 2012. During this period, a total of 2,166 autopsy cases were conducted.
Result: Of the total 2,166 cases, maximum numbers of autopsy cases [213 (9.83%)] were conducted in October. Male cases predominated over the female cases, which were 1,663 (76.77%). The maximum numbers of cases [615 (28.39%)] were in the age group of 2130 years. Injury-related deaths were more in number [989 (45.66%)] of the total cases. Natural deaths accounted for 469 (21.65%) cases, violent asphyxial deaths were 239 (11.03%) cases, and thermal injury accounted for 272 (12.56%) cases, followed by the poisoning [183 (8.45%)] cases.
Conclusion: It is observed that the most common cause of death is road traffic accident, probably owing to higher frequency of transportation. The most common cause of death was vehicular accidents involving head injury.
Key words: Unnatural deaths, violent asphyxial death, mechanical injury, burns, poisoning
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