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A police scientist has been awarded £464,000 in compensation, after developing post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) following his duties after the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami in India, Sri Lanka and Thailand.

The police forensics expert – who has asked not to be named – was tasked with examining thousands of bodies recovered from the tsunami, but claimed that he was not offered any counselling to help him cope with the experience.

A total of 230,000 people died in the Boxing Day tsunami, which occurred after an earthquake in the Indian Ocean.

The Daily Mail reports that the police forensics expert help carry out vital work in identifying the bodies, but developed PTSD after he returned to the UK.

He has been off work on sick leave for much of the last 10 years and says he did not receive counselling from the police quango which employed him.

The amount of the compensation payment – which is thought to be one of the largest compensation settlements paid out to a police employee – was revealed in Home Office accounts published last week.

The police scientist was formerly employed by Centrex and the National Policing Improvement Agency, which have now been replaced by the College of Policing as the police scientist’s employer.

The payment listed in the Home Office’s annual accounts is referred to as:

“A compensation payment of £464,000 was paid by the College of Policing in respect of an employee who suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder.”

The scientist was one of 60 police officers and non-police workers deployed to help out with the recovery operation following the 2004 tsunami.


The Mail on Sunday has revealed that police officers routinely receive payments of around £500 for dealing with distressing tasks during the course of their duties, such as recovering decomposed bodies from rivers – police employees are estimated to have received a total of £85 million in compensation from the police force over the last five years. Up to 2,000 police officers receive compensation for injuries sustained in the line of duty every year.

In 2013, figures released by the Police Federation showed that in 2012, a total of 1,859 officers received compensation settlements totalling £19.8 million for injuries incurred during the course of their duties.

A total of £47.3 million was also paid to 6,600 police officers for personal injury claims made between 2009 and 2011.

Commenting on the case of the police scientist who worked on identifying bodies recovered from the Boxing Day tsunami, the College of Policing said:

“In 2005, the Home Office put together a deployment of policing experts to help in the response to the Sri Lanka tsunami.

“Following a review of the 2005 deployment, the College of Policing recognises that there were matters Centrex could have dealt with better, including post-incident support.”

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