Teaching, training and practice of forensic medicine in India - An overview

Forensic medicine & Toxicology, an important and integral part of medical education, has been a silent spectator to its ups and downs in the recent past. Having had its glory at times, playing pivotal role at places in aiding criminal justice, it has unfortunately failed to sustain the impetus and its importance. Furthermore, Medical Council of India (MCI) - the national medical supreme body, has come down heavily on this specialty in general and on its curriculum in particular at the undergraduate level, pushing it down to the cross roads. The increasing legal awareness among the masses, frequent unsavory remarks on the doctors by the judiciary, bringing medical profession under the purview of the Consumer Protection Act in contrast to the decreasing of importance of the subject in the medical curriculum coupled with casual approach to the subject both by the teacher and the taught have all culminated into a situation where fate of the subject befits the words of Sir Winston Churchill, “This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”