Profile of poisoning cases reported by state chemical laboratory, punjab

Punjab is predominantly an agricultural state where all kinds of pesticides are easily available because of overwhelming use in agriculture. A number of unnatural deaths comprising suicides, homicides, and accidental deaths occur in the state every year. The alleged modes of death include poisoning, intake of wrong medicines, intoxication, illness, hanging, strangulation, throttling, drowning, electrical injuries, burns, animal bites, other injuries, etc., but all deaths are not actually due to the causes mentioned as alleged causes. In many of these cases, the actual cause of death is finally found to be poisoning though some other cause like drowning, illness, etc., is projected as an alleged cause to subvert the investigation.

This study is an attempt to create awareness amongst doctors conducting autopsies about the incidence of poisoning in such unnatural deaths so that the postmortem examination is conducted keeping in view the possibility of death due to poisoning, even if the alleged cause is something else. One thousand deaths reported to the Punjab State Chemical Laboratory have been studied for the poisoning profile, in which comparisons have been made regarding the incidence of various poisons, sex-wise distribution, age groups, etc.