ABSTRACT
Dating of an injury in both living and dead is an important medico-legal issue in the field of crime investigation to fix the liability. A doctor is required to date injuries specifically and individually while preparing an injury report. In this paper we study the sequential changes in mechanical and thermal injuries and to compare the findings with available standard data. All the medico-legal deaths due to injuries, brought for post-mortem examination, over a period of four months were studied. On comparing with standard data, 71% (n=32) of the abrasions were dark red instead of bright red on first day. 92% (n=13) bruises appears bluish green instead of red colour on first day and on the 5th day, the colour appears black instead of greenish colour. In cases of incised and lacerated wound margins were difficult to separate on the 2nd day, instead of separating easily. Observations of this study did not match with the sequential colour changes mentioned in the available literature. Therefore, other parameters need to be explored for dating an injury.