Scientific interpretation of unusual injuries observed in a death caused by firing from an unlicensed rifled firearm

Abstract

Homicide is the act of killing one person by another. However, for convicting the accused various factors like motive, pre-planning, and circumstantial evidence are taken into consideration. There are various ways by which homicide can be accomplished. The method of using a firearm to kill a person is still less common in India as compared to western countries due to the stringent regulations to have a licensed firearm. However, people get unlicensed firearms (rifled or shotgun) from the black market. These are improvised firearms and lead to injuries which are not matching with the descriptions as per the prevailing conventional literature. This makes the interpretation of injuries by autopsy surgeons difficult to corroborate with circumstantial findings. Here we report a case where a middle-aged male is the victim of a gunshot by unknown individuals who had followed him knowing that he had withdrawn money from the bank. The gunshot is from an unlicensed rifled firearm which produced unusual injuries in multiple places. The authors had tried to deliberate the possible scientific explanation behind the causation of such an atypical pattern of injuries.