Indian Journal of Forensic Medicine & Toxicology

Increasing trend of poisoning is leading to unnatural premature death in working population of developing country. Analysis of poisoning can help stakeholders to take measures for prevention of poisoning.

To assess the magnitude of unnatural death due to suspected poisoning and to find out its correlates.

Record based cross-sectional study was performed in the department of Forensic Medicine of Gulbarga Institute Medical Science involving the victims of unnatural death due to suspected poisoning during year 2017. Information pertaining to sociodemographics, place and time of occurrence of poisoning and death after poisoning, background cause of poisoning etc. was collected from the postmortem report, police inquest and treatment history, if any using a predesigned proforma.

Overall, 87.93% of unnatural deaths, 27.12% were due to suspected poisoning. In our study we found that in overall unnatural deaths due to poisoning, male proportion was higher (68.5%) compared to female and age group of 15–30 years was with highest death rate (39.4%). Majority of poisoning cases happened during summer (35.0%). Care could be sought in higher number of cases where occurrence took place within premises (87.69%) and in morning (92.16%). Most(44.9%) of poisoning cases found during summer season. Majority of poisoning cases were documented in Hindu population 84.9% followed by Muslim. Marital status wise distribution of poisoning cases showed, maximum number of poisoning cases in married people 65.3%.

Counseling in different life situations and strict legal enforcement in selling and handling of agrochemicals is the need of the hour to avoid premature loss of human resource from unnatural deaths due to poisoning.