Indian forensic academic's contributions to postmortem interval determination: A review

The most crucial and commonly asked question in medicolegal investigations is determination of postmortem interval (PMI). The calculation of PMI has been widely studied by forensic scientists around the globe in the past and many advanced methods are now being practiced. The following review summarizes the attempts made in forensic medicine by Indian forensic scholars to pinpoint the PMI using molecular biology methods, entomological based methods, thanatochemistry and other methods such as histological assessment of cellular changes, enzyme activity and rigor mortis.

Studies on postmortem interval by Indian forensic scholars were retrieved through a systematized internet search of the databases “MEDLINE”; “EMBASE”; “Science Direct”; “Scopus”; “PubMed”; and “Google Scholar” using the keywords time since death, forensic medicine, postmortem interval, PMI, forensic science, proteins, RNA, forensic entomology, thanatochemistry, vitreous humor, synovial fluid, cerebrospinal fluid, and India, with the last search accomplished in July, 2020. A total of 71 research papers have been assessed and cited in this review article.

To date, none of these methods allow us to precisely define the PMI when used alone. However, recent forensic studies in India, such as protein or RNA degradation tests, have demonstrated the potential for advanced ways to pinpoint short PMI. Additionally, more work is being done to develop methods for long PMI estimates. Shockingly, in forensic practice, there is still no simple method that can precisely pinpoint PMI. It gives the idea that the future pattern to pinpoint PMI depends on a combination of various techniques.