Sudden death due to tuberculosis

Forensic pathologists deal not only with criminal, accidental and suicidal deaths, but also with a wide range of deaths from natural causes. Many of these deaths are sudden, unexpected, clinically unexplained or obscure, even though there need be no criminal element in their causation. Unnatural deaths have always to be investigated by the police, but very often natural deaths forms the basis of medico legal investigation, if they had occurred suddenly in apparently healthy persons. Often at autopsy these so called unnatural deaths may turn out to be natural and vice versa. Two cases of sudden death occurring in young individuals under suspicious circumstances are presented. On autopsy they were diagnosed to be secondary to tuberculosis.