A case of firearm injury depicted as heart attack by the police

This is a very interesting case where I have spent a very large span of time while during autopsy. This case was presented by the InvestigatingOfficer as a case of heart attack buried in the cemetery without informing the police. The relatives are having suspicion as to the cause of death. He also told that he got an injury on the back & outer aspect of chest on the left side while he was moved to the hospital in an auto rickshaw. The culprit for the causation of injury was a nail on the inner side of the rickshaw close to seat. I was deputed for this . Next morning I went the cemetery & to my surprise I saw two persons cleaning the decomposed dead body. I have attended a number of exhumations & in no such cleaning processes were noticed. The then ASssistant superintendantofPolice was watching all these & I shouted at him like anything & he replied that he did not know the consequences. After that I went near the dead body& noticed an oblique wound of rifled firearm injury on the left outer aspect of chest; produced by a revolver. ( No blackening,grease collar,& tattooing)No other injury was therein other parts of the body. With extreme caution, after noting the preliminaryfindings I searched for the presence of bullet. I was able to notice the wound of entry in the VII inter costal space with ricochet at the vii rib & wound getting terminated at the lower lobe of left lung. More than I litre of blood with blood clot was taken from the chest cavity. When the wound track ends in the substance of the lung; the bullet can get outof the body in the following ways.1) When he was alive if it gets in to the main bronchus he can cough it out.2) After death there is increase of intrathoracic & abdominal pressure due to decomposition& it can get out of the bodythrough mouth. 3) It can also get into the oesophagus by the person gulping it down while alive & track down to large intestine. 4) If it is getting into circulatory system by any means it can produce bullet embolism. I searched the body cavities, body parts by remembering all these possibilities but could not found any. I even searched inside the pit with my bare hands& the same was fruitless. I had the opportunity to examine the red& black check shirt worn by the deceased & could make out wound of entry corresponding to the external wound. Blackening was there, grease collar, burns effect & some quantity of power stripling. The wound track was taken from there along with ribs,soft tissues, lung etc for X-ray & found nothing except particles of sand. Discussion with the HOD revealed the fact that it is unwise to give an opinion as the deceased died of firearm injury sustained to chest involving the lung. Actually this was in my mind. The opinion given was the deceased died of penetrating injury sustained due to a projectile. In the meantime every description suits that of firearm injury. The greatest mistake committed by me was1) Not taking an X-ray of the body( A trial was made & no private hospital allowed it) 2) Giving the opinion as due to projectile. By this opinion I gave the police an opportunity to think in terms of bomb blast. Later on investigations assumed that i was good for nothing & did not to inter pert the finding correctly etc.in different levels in the police department. An year afterwards an shocking news came in the newspapers" DR.UMADETHAN & DR. GEORGE PAUL could recover a bullet from the decomposing left lung using metal detector. A turning point in the investigation!!!. I felt depressed & even cursed my inability. Later on while I went to give evidence at the THODUPUZHA seesions the ballistic expert Sri. JAMES made a sarcastic statement to me" The bullet recovered in the above case did not match with the suspect weapon". In other words the test bullet & crime bullet did not tally!!!. What does it mean. I didnot make any comment.The reader of this blog can guess.
Years after I was questioned by the CBI & I gave a very detailed statement explaining every thing happened with the case.At last the accused were arrested by CBI & trial was conducted at the CBI court EKM. I went there one day prior to my trial to have a discussion with the special PublicProsecutor & I was given an appointment only on the day of trial. Without any knowledge of firearms & without studying the case properly by thePublicProsecutor,the meeting ended in a big quarrel. He was prepared enough to say that the fault is mine for not recovering the bullet. Twice I was called into give evidence & do not know what had happened with the judgement.The thing that I know was 1) The wife & son of the deceased committed suicide. 2) In a Malayalam weekly recently Dr. umadethan proclaimed that because of his effort only the case was proved. He never mentioned that he was doing the II or the III autopsy & the first one was conducted at Medical college Trichur. I rang him & iformed him that what he did was wrong.Now Iam very happy to say that he deserved the credit.
dr.n.rajaram