Atique Mahmud1, Monowar Ahmad Tarafdar2, Md. Akram Hossain3, Noor-E-Alam Mina PPM4, Mohammad Shamsul Alam5
1. Assistant Professor, Department of Forensic Medicine, Jalalabad Ragıb-Rabeya Medical College, Sylhet.
2. Professor and Head, Department of Community Medicine, Z H Sikder Women’s Medical college, Dhaka.
3. Deputy Commissioner (Sadar), Sylhet Metropolitan Police.
5. Associate Professor, Department of Forensic Medicine, North East Medical College, Sylhet.
Abstract
The present cross-sectional study was a done by document review of the registered unnatural death cases of all police stations of Sylhet district from January 2009 to December 2013 to find out the trends of unnatural deaths in Sylhet District, Bangladesh. The sample size was 522. Male female ratio was 2:1 (male 353 (67.62%), female 169 (32.38%). It was revealed from the study that the highest number of unnatural death was occured in the year 2010, followed by 22.41% in 2013, 19.16% in 2009, 18.20% in 2012 and 16.86% in 2011. From 2009-2012 number of unnatural deaths among male was high (23.37%) in 2012, During the study period, the number of male victims (74.74%) were in the year 2012 and highest reported female victims were in the year 2011 (37.50%). Among all cases the cause of death was unknown in 40.04% cases, followed by suicidal hanging 31.42%, Drowning 9.0%, suicidal poisoning 07.09% fall from height 3.26% and suicide by self inflicted fire 2.68%, and 0.2% death caused by lightning. Among the female victims, 110 (65.09%) deaths were took place in their husband’s house 32 (18.93%) were in their father’s house and body of 15.98% victims was unidentified. Out of 522 cases, 101 (19.35%) cases were resolved by the local police authorities and 421 (80.35%) bodies were sent for post mortem reports, From 421 cases, 401 (95.25%) were confirmed as suicide and only 20 (4.75%) were confirmed as homicide The high incidence of suicidal hangings among young adults especially females imposes a huge socioeconomic burden on our society. Due to its private nature easy availability of ligature materials and ligature points makes prevention of suicide by hanging a difficult task.
Key Words: Unnatural death, Suicidal hanging, Poisoning, Postmortem examination