Reliability between medical board and ballistics expert: a case history

摘要

The present study is based on the basis of a particular case examined by the author himself. Further the author has felt on the basis of the media reports from time to time where it has been presented by the media that the medical officers are repeating negligence again and again which becomes the major role in losing the lives of the patient. It is the bitter truth of this country that it has been observed that medical officers remain very busy due to the heavy work load assigned to them. There may be many reasons behind this like acute shortage of staff, over burdened work load, lack of interest on the station posted, atmospheric conditions or some other reasons may also be there. It has also been observed that sometimes during the medical examination/ postmortem the medical officers depute some other persons for the sealing of the exhibits for the forensic examination. It has also been observed that rather to seal the parcels himself the doctors depute the servants, nurses or even sometime they depute class IV employees for this purpose. Also it has been come into the notice that the foreign body recovered from the dead body during the post mortem is sealed by the class IV employees which may further lead to a misleading forensic results. During the examination of firearm projectile it has been observed sometimes that the firearm projectile is having some extra marks which have not been occurred by the firearm but they had been appeared by some other metallic objects which may cause divert the attention of the forensic expert during the examination of firearm and tool marks examination. And it was felt that perhaps such marks have been occurred by some metallic object which might have been used during the sealing of the exhibits. It has also been observed that sometimes the exhibits found sealed inside the parcel does not relate with the particular case. Then on perusal of the record it was felt that the actual exhibit was sealed in another case. Such mistakes create legal problems as well as the misleading results also which may affect the forensic analysis and it becomes the reason of arising questions on the credibility of such a medical examination.