(Dr Sudhir Gupta, Additional Prof, Forensic Medicine & Toxicology, AIIMS)
Simulated suicide by hanging
· The most common method of suicide all over the world is hanging because the factors deciding method of suicide are like accessibility, feasibility, credibility of method causing death and rapidity of the method.
· As the death by hanging is being easily achieved using cheap and easily available materials resulting in fast and painless death.
· After homicidal strangulation means homicides by hanging and the simulation of suicide by hanging a victim previously killed or made unable to resist by other means are regarded as extremely rare events, although especially in German forensic literature cases of this kind were repeatedly reported.
· Example to the number of observations published so far: A 23-year-old student strangled his 58-year-old father with an electric cable until he ceased to show any signs of life. Then he hanged the victim at the handrail of the staircase with a running noose.
· From the forensic point of view the following clues pointed to homicide: presence of massive signs of facial congestion in spite of the "typical" situation of hanging, horizontal ligature mark in addition to the noose mark, skin injuries at the head and the upper extremities, traces of blood near the place where the body was found.
· The case history presented emphasizes again that for differential diagnosis the possibility of a dissimulated homicide has to be considered in all cases where a body is found suspended.
Reference InstitutfürGerichtlicheMedizin, UniversitätTübingen.
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