Disasters cause destruction and death accompanied by human suffering They exceed the local capacity to cope and usually bring untold human misery and loss. This thesis focuses on the ethics of forensic medicine in disasters. It has the following research objectives: 1. To explore ethical issues faced by forensic doctors in disaster settings as identified in the literature. 2. To identify ethical issues faced by forensic doctors in India during disasters. 3. To carry out ethical analysis of two important issues, from those identified through the literature review and the in-depth interviews. 4. To develop a set of recommendations based on this analysis. To identify the ethical issues, a comprehensive review of the academic literature of the last 20 years was done. In addition, twenty forensic doctors exposed to working in disasters were interviewed. Data from these interviews were coded and analyzed using a grounded theory approach. For the ethical analysis the Universal Declaration of Bioethics and Human Rights was used. The ethical analysis showed that indiscriminate photography and circulation of confidential information are a breach of privacy of the dead and their families. Resource limitation is a major obstacle in timely identification of the dead and in their respectful treatment. Serious efforts need to be made to identify the dead in disasters as proper identification helps families grieve and gives closure. Research on unidentified bodies should only be allowed in exceptional situations, for example, if the research benefits future disaster victims (e.g. research on identification methods), or if the research has overriding public health benefits, (e.g. during an epidemic). Oversight mechanisms should be put in place to facilitate respectful treatment of the dead when carrying out research. The study highlights a pressing need for establishing guidelines and providing training to forensic personnel, thereby aiding efficient identification.