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Central Forensic Science Laboratory, 30, Gorachand Road, Kolkata-700 014, India E-mail : sujitclahiri@yahoo.com Fax : 91-33-22849442 Manuscript received 06 January 2017, accepted 03 February 2017 Toxicology is an important branch of forensic science. A salient feature of the present day society is apparently innocent death of a large number of victims through calculated murders or deliberately causing harms to persons. These are done by administration of high doses of sedatives, tranquillisers or antipsychotic drugs, pesticides above lethal doses, poisons mixed with alcohols, harmless drinks. Sometimes addictive poisons like methanol were utilised to make country made liquors or hooch. 2105 cases with nearly 14,000 samples (including viscera, blood, other body parts, poisoning related materials etc.) were examined by the Central Forensic Science Laboratory, Kolkata during the years 2001-2010 (up to April) received from different law enforcing investigative agencies (from Delhi to Andaman) for forensic toxicological examinations to find out, (i) the nature of crime, (ii) substances responsible for death or causing human injury and (iii) culprits of such heinous crimes. The number of drugs, pesticides, poisons etc. are widely variable and the method of investigations are highly complex and variable and different methodologies had to be adopted to extract the pure compounds and their examinations. Routine analyses of the samples were done. But to validate the results and their authentication, sophisticated instruments like spectrophotometer, GC-FTIR, GC-MS, GC-HS, AAS, IC, HPLC and HPTLC were used. The results of the investigation suggested that methanol, sedatives, pesticides (both organic and inorganic) have been extensively used with local variations. There is also a gradual change of use of toxicological agents with time which also varied from place to place. The investigative results are presented in this paper. |
