A rare case report of sudden death of a child due to non-traumatic (spontaneous) acute subdural haemorrhage

Cases of spontaneous acute subdural haemorrhages have rarely been reported in available literature. A case of sudden death of an eight year old child is thereby presented, which the police reported to have died in mysterious circumstances (probably due to unknown poisoning). They were not convinced with the version of the poor father of the deceased that his son died within 8 hour time of returning happily back home after a 2 hour play session in neighborhood, with the sole complaint of moderate intensity (as per himself) headache. No history of fall, trauma, fever, epilepsy, animal/snake bite or vomiting/convulsions during terminal illness was available. No signs of external injury, snake/animal bite, asphyxia etc were present on autopsy. Internally no significant findings were found except for presence of bilateral subdural haemorrhage. No intracranial vascular anomaly was detected on gross examination. The case shall be discussed from medico legal angle with review of relevant literature.