Red Fort blast: Jaw, torso, limb — three body parts lie unclaimed, DNA test planned to match them with 12 victims

According to officials, this scientific exercise is being initiated because the three body parts remain at the LNJP Hospital mortuary with no one to claim them. “The samples of the twelve bodies were preserved for chemical reaction analysis and DNA profiling and have been sent to a forensic science lab (FSL),” one source said.

“There is a possibility that these three body parts may match the twelve dead bodies already identified, because among the twelve there were bodies that were missing some parts,” the source added. “But since the families identified them, they were handed over for last rites. If a match is confirmed, the body parts will be handed over to the families of those victims.”

In addition to these remains, officials have collected several muscle-tissue fragments from the Red Fort blast site, which will also be analyzed by the forensic science laboratory. “We will study them and later decide on what has to be done,” an official from the hospital said.

Meanwhile, doctors at Lok Nayak Hospital have prepared the post-mortem reports — key scientific evidence — for the twelve patients who died in the blast. According to these reports, sources said, the patients “died due to cardiopulmonary arrest consequent upon hemorrhagic shock and head injury due to a blast explosion.”

“In simple terms, the deaths occurred after the heart and lungs stopped working because of severe bleeding and a head injury caused by the explosion,” the source said.

Post-mortem reports are key evidence relied upon by the probe agencies in bomb blast case, offering the scientific detail needed to understand how victims died and the precise injuries they suffered. By documenting patterns of trauma, shrapnel wounds, burns and blunt-force impact, the reports allow investigators to piece together the dynamics of the explosion and to assess the type or the intensity of the explosives used.

Sources from the hospital said the force of the blast was so great that at least four patients died on the spot due to a fatal head injury. The findings showed that many of the bodies exhibited multiple fractures and significant head trauma, with blast waves contributing to internal injuries.

The source highlighted that the victims exhibited all four categories of blast injuries. Primary injuries stemmed from the blast wave impact, which caused head-open defects; secondary injuries included tissue blackening and punctate lacerated wounds caused by shrapnel from glass and metal; tertiary injuries involved blunt-force trauma sustained when bodies were thrown against walls or the ground; and quaternary injuries included burns. “In all these post mortems, all four kinds of injuries were present, as is typical in high-intensity explosion cases,” the source said.