Medico-legal Examination of Accused of Alleged Rape Cases A Prospective Study

Sexual offences are the most heinous crimes against women. During examination of an accused of alleged sexual assault preservation of evidences is an important task. In India, owing to poor collection of medical evidences, conviction rate of accused is low.

This study aims at recording results of medical examination and knowing injury patterns of alleged sexual assault accused along with preserving proper medico-legal evidence. A consecutive series of 41 accused, were examined in the head-to-toe manner including genitals. Accused were referred from emergency department with proper requisition for examination by investigating police officer. After careful medical examination, samples were collected for chemical analysis. We concluded that most of the accused were young unmarried males from the age group 21–30 years. Fifty six percent accused were friend and 29.2% were known to the victim. Only about a fifth of them were presented for examination on the day of incident itself and none of them had evidence of any struggle injuries.