Indore (Madhya Pradesh): A rare and shocking case emerged in MGM Medical College’s Forensic Medicine Department and MY Hospital’s postmortem unit as it was found that a young Nepalese man died of a lethal overdose of a drug he concocted himself after following instructions from online video.
The incident surfaced when Vijay Nagar police brought the body for autopsy. Post mortem examination surgeon Dr Jitendra Singh Tomar, assisted by interns Dr Osheen Jain and Dr Jai Prakash Verma, found the man, a hotel cook who had recently shifted to Indore from Gurugram to be in good health, with no external injuries or signs of suicide.
The cause of death seemed mysterious until Dr Tomar detected a tiny puncture mark, no larger than a pinhead, in the femoral artery near the thigh joint.
Acting on this lead, the forensic team visited the deceased’s rented accommodation with the police. Inside, they discovered two strips of high-potency painkiller tablets (prescribed only in extreme medical cases), a spoon with powder residue, a lighter and a syringe.
Such medicines are not sold without a prescription and raised questions about how the youth obtained them.
A search of the youth’s mobile phone revealed online video platform history showing step-by-step videos on heating the tablets on a spoon and injecting the preparation into the thigh.
His roommate told the police that the deceased often locked himself in the bathroom to take injections. He also recalled seeing him receive video calls from someone guiding him on drug preparation and injection.
Dr Tomar concluded that the overdose from this homemade preparation was the likely cause of death.
“In my career of conducting over 3,000 autopsies, this is the first time I have encountered such a case,” Dr Tomar said, stressing that visiting the crime scene proved vital in solving the mystery.
