Tuticorin Firing: HC Orders Autopsy on Remaining 6 Bodies

Chennai, Jun 5 (PTI) The Madras High Court today made it clear that post-mortem on six bodies out of the 13 people killed in police firing on anti-Sterlite protesters in Tuticorin has to be carried out according to the court's earlier directions.

On May 30, a vacation bench had passed an interim order on conducting re-postmortem on seven other bodies with stringent guidelines to be followed.

It also directed that it be conducted in the presence of a doctor either from the AIIMS or from JIPMER, Puducherry, or any other doctor from Government Hospital at Trivandrum.

Immediately after the pronouncement of the order, the counsel for petitioners (some families of the deceased) raised objections for not allotting any doctor of their choice and sought one week's time to approach the Supreme Court.

Advocate General Vijay Narayan submitted today that according to the request made by the counsel, the order was kept in abeyance for one week with regard to autopsy on the remaining six bodies.

The counsel approached the Supreme Court and the apex court said there was no urgency and a petition may be filed after the vacation.

The First Bench, comprising Chief Justice Indira Banerjee and Justice P T Asha, in its order, today said "post-mortem as per the earlier order by inclusion of doctors of specified medical institutions may cause some delay. It is for the immediate family members of the deceased to take a call."

If they make a written request, post-mortem may be carried out in accordance with the directions contained in the May 30 order of the division bench, it said.

If not, post-mortem may be carried out by medical experts who would ordinarily have carried out the autopsy.

However, all the other safeguards specified in the earlier order such as video-graphing of post-mortem, taking of photographs, preservation and expert examination of bullets and other foreign objects, shall be adhered to, the first bench said.

The court has been informed that re-postmortem has already been performed on seven bodies, the bench said.

"In these cases, post-mortem could not be carried out at all because family members of the deceased had refused to cooperate in the identification of bodies.

"Of course, deaths being unnatural, the post-mortem has to be performed. It is not in dispute that there was police firing which caused death," it said.

"Post-mortem might only indicate whether the cause of death was by firing or not and in any case, even a post-mortem report is based on medical opinion, upon examination of the body."

The court said it did not see any reason to pass any different order now for autopsy as sought by the petitioners and direct that it only be carried out by seniormost doctors of Government Medical College, Trivandrum.

"There should, in our view, be uniformity in investigation of the same incident, of which post-mortem is a part," it said and posted the matter for further hearing to June 25.

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