A Representative Study of Deaths of North Indian Migrants and Its Medical Certification Across the World

Many Indians is moving to other nations of the world in the search of employment, education or other reasons. The process of globalization along with the faster mode of traveling and communication has facilitated this movement in the hope of getting more opportunities and earning of easy money abroad, than in India. Unfortunately, sometimes they meet a tragic end and their families in India get only their dead bodies back from abroad. This study focuses on these kind of unfortunate tragic events faced by Indians in different countries and thereby raise a concern on their safety abroad and necessitate the need of relooking in to the quality of medical certification of death and medico legal investigations to find out the real reasons of deaths to avoid any kind of doubt in mind. Data was collected from medical death certificates and passports of the deceased Indians. There was a total of 711 dead bodies/human remains received in 2012 at IGI airport New Delhi. The Middle East countries together contributed a total of 398 (55.98 %) cases. The distribution as per manner of death shows that in maximum number of cases (269), the manner of death was ambiguous with unspecified aetiology. The study therefore recommends for upgradation of the level of medico legal investigations in form of 2nd autopsy in recipient country and proper medical death certification.