Hanging: nature of ligature material applied and type of hanging according to point of suspension.

One of the most common manners of unnatural death that has been rapidly increasing in Nepal is suicide. The choice of method depends on the accessibility and availability of the means. Therefore suicide by hanging with the ligature material ranging from torn clothing, bed sheet to a shoelace is incorporated. Objective of this study is to find the choice of the type of ligature material used by the victims and the type of hanging found in relation to the point of suspension in both genders. This prospective study was conducted in all cases of death due to hanging (44 cases) during the year January 2007to April 2008 coming for post mortem examination at BPKIHS Dharan Nepal. Nearly half of the hanging victims (21 or 47.72%) used rope for hanging and nearly one third victims (14 or 31.81%) used shawl, rest of victims 4 (9.09%) used sari, 2 (4.54%) victims used either bed sheet or woolen muffler in each and belt was used as ligature by one (2.27%) of the victims. It was observed that in more than half of the cases (25 or 56.81%) hanging was partial (i.e. some body parts were touching the ground). Amongst partial hanging cases, female victims (16 or 64%) outnumbered the male victims (9 or 47.37%).While rest 19 (43.18%) cases were complete hanging (i.e. body was not touching the ground).