Unidentified bodies, missing persons: How AIIMS is helping put a name to a face using DNA data

Even as it took around a week to trace at least one of the parents, AIIMS kept the relevant information for future use. It has now uploaded that information on a website it recently launched.

UMID (Unidentified dead bodies, Missing persons, Identification portal and DNA database), the website was launched by AIIMS Delhi’s Department of Forensics Medicine & Toxicology in collaboration with its regional centres and other medical institutes in Delhi on October 18.

The bigger goal is to help in the cases related to unidentified bodies and missing persons in India. The portal already has a database of more than 1,700 unidentified bodies and missing persons.

According to Dr Chittaranjan Behera, Professor, Department of Forensic Medicine & Toxicology, the pilot project was started by the institute in 2022. It has entered the second phase with the launch of the website. “After this, we want to establish a national database,” he said. All over the world, he underlined, there is a DNA database for unidentified bodies but in India there is no such national database that existed so far.

In India, according to Dr Behera, around 50,000 unidentified bodies and over 3,00,000 missing persons are reported each year. “Despite police efforts, which include publishing physical descriptions, photographs, and other details shared via media and ZIP Net (Zonal Integrated Police Network), about 80–90% of these bodies remain unidentified forever. This highlights the urgent need for a national DNA database and an integrated identification system to address the challenges of identifying unidentified bodies and missing persons,” he added.

The UMID website provides public access to physical descriptions, photographs, and other phenotype details of the unidentified bodies. The corresponding DNA profiles are securely stored in a database.

Dr Behera is the Principal Investigator of the project, which is being supported by Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), and is currently operational at seven centers across India— AIIMS Delhi, Maulana Azad Medical College, New Delhi, AIIMS Rishikesh, AIIMS Jodhpur, AIIMS Bhubaneswar, & JIPMER, Puducherry.

“We will soon expand to an additional fourteen centers for validating its usability and accuracy,” Dr Behera said.

Family members or claimants can search the portal to check for a potential match with their missing relatives and may contact the postmortem centers or DNA laboratories for DNA profiling to create a reference database. A dedicated search algorithm has been developed to automatically compare DNA data and help identify the unidentified bodies.

In his 25-year career, Dr Behera said, he has come across several reasons why a body remains unidentified. “Recently, a train accident in Odisha that killed more than 290 people. DNA testing was challenging as we had to take samples from bodies and the claimants,” said Dr Behera.

In a majority of cases, the unidentified bodies are of poor and homeless people. “We have so many people coming from different states living on footpaths and most of them do not have ID proof and in such cases the bodies remain unidentified,” he added.

“If a claimant thinks that the database has someone from their family or some relative, they can give samples through police or directly and we can take a hair, blood or saliva to us, which will help us do DNA profiling of the claimant. We have a question database which has phenotype information and DNA profile of all unidentified dead bodies. The question database is where the phenotype and DNA data of all unidentified bodies and missing persons is kept,” he said.

He added, “We have prepared a concept note for a national DNA database and identification portal for taking this on a national level and in connecting the claimant with the body from any part of the country. Soon, we will also provide access to the website to all forensic labs across the country,” said Dr Behera.