Posthumous diagnosis of plasmodium vivax infection causing death: A Rare Entity

The malarial infection leading to morbidity and mortality is common throughout the world. Sudden deaths due to malarial infection are not uncommon. These unexpected sudden deaths pose a challenging task to the forensic pathologist. Such deaths are more commonly due to Plasmodium falciparum. However deaths due to Plasmodium vivax are also reported in the literature. The Plasmodium vivaxinfection can lead to cardiac functional abnormality in already compromised heart. We present a case of sudden death wherein post mortem analysis of blood revealed the Plasmodium vivax infection helping us to ascertain the cause of death.