Medico legal study of hanging and strangulation

A prospective study of hanging and strangulation deaths in Aurangabad region of Maharashtra for a period of 2 years is presented. Of 145 victims investigated, majority (75-9%) of the cases was observed in males and most of them had the ligature mark either above the thyroid cartilage (93.1%) or over the thyroid cartilage (6.9%). The majority of the incidents were seen between 21–30 years of age (39.3%). Ligature material used by the victims was nylon rope in 68.9% of cases followed by duppata in (11%) cases. The manner of death was suicidal (99.3%) in cases and (0.7%) cases in hanging on the other hand 100% cases of homicidal in strangulation. Similarly postmortem findings like saliva dribbling (59.3%), neck organ fracture (3.6%), subconjunctival hemorrhage (49.65%) etc were found in variable number of cases.