India is increasingly facing natural and human-made disasters, leading to large-scale fatalities. Accurate disaster victim identification (DVI) is essential for medico-legal, humanitarian, and psychosocial contexts. It upholds the dignity of the deceased by enabling the return of the remains to the family for final rites. However, India continues to face significant infrastructural, operational, and policy-related limitations in DVI.
This study aimed to examine the role of forensic science in DVI, assess the operational and legal-policy shortcomings in India’s DVI framework compared with international norms, investigate the psychological and humanitarian ramifications of delayed or incorrect identification, and propose a comprehensive legal-policy framework for DVI.
This structured narrative review was conducted through a thorough literature search in PubMed, Scopus, and Google Scholar. The last date of the search was 31 January 2026. The review was supplemented with existing legal-policy analysis and a comparison of the Indian DVI scenario with international standards. Selected Indian disaster case studies from 1999 to 2025 were used to understand the major recurring challenges related to DVI in India. The data were synthesized using a thematic narrative approach.
This study identified deficiencies in India’s DVI preparedness and response, including a shortage of trained forensic experts, insufficient mortuary infrastructure, fragmented coordination between ante-mortem and post-mortem data, poor documentation practices, limited integration of DNA, biometric, and dental records, and a lack of standardized national protocols.
A comparative analysis showed that India lags behind the UK, USA, and Australia in multidisciplinary coordination, technological integration, and family-support mechanisms. Delayed or inaccurate identification contributes to prolonged grief, legal complications, and erosion of public trust.
Hence, India requires a dedicated National DVI Act, specialized DVI institutions, integrated forensic databases, rapid-response multidisciplinary forensic teams, standardized INTERPOL-aligned protocols, ethical governance of genetic and biometric data, and strengthened psychosocial support systems for the families of the deceased.
Authors: Subhasis Bhadra, Poulami Laha, Vina Vaswani, Dinakaran Damodharan, and Suresh Bada Math
