The Department of Forensic Medicine and Toxicology started functioning in year 1957. Later Prof. Jagdish Chandra joined as Lecturer and was designated as Head of Department. Medicolegal postmortem work was started from year 1968. At present, apart from routine medico-legal works, department is engaged in multifarious activities of teaching, training and research. It is involved in medico-legal postmortems, Clinical Forensic medicine Services & court related works. Department is providing expert opinions in referred cases from courts, National Human Rights Commission, CBI, Crime Branch, Delhi Police and Investigating agencies from other states. The department is running various laboratory services like Forensic histopathology laboratory, Toxicology laboratory and DNA laboratory.

Dr Sudhir K Gupta has taken the charge of Professor and Head of Department since August 2013 and has introduced new innovative developments like Embalming facility in public interest. His long term plan is to develop Cadaveric Training Centre, Cadaver organ/tissue retrieval and processing Centre, Odourless Autopsy suite, Virtual Dissection-less autopsy, Forensic Molecular Biology unit, One stop crisis center for survivors of Sexual assault and Therapeutic transplantation Centre from brain dead in future. Clinical toxicology and antidote banking for treatment of poisoning cases is also being envisaged.

Forensic Anthropology laboratory, first of its kind in the country, is being developed in the department. It will be well-equipped as per international standards and will act as quality training centre and provide mentor facility for whole country.

The Department is planning to set up a facility which could manage approximately 1000 dead bodies simultaneously and will have all the necessary infrastructural, manpower, resources, residential and transportation facilities related to Forensic Human Identification related to any disaster and Dignified Management of the Dead. At present there is no such single centre nationwide which could handle the management of dead efficiently as a unified centre in case of a mass disaster. The High-throughput design will encompass all aspects of the management of the dead, starting from recovery of the bodies to final burial rites, including support to the affected families and communities. The setting up of such facility will require a significant amount of time, until which additional facility for handling of 100 bodies in a case of disaster will be established along with the present mortuary set-up.