Mumbai: The Bombay High Court on Thursday directed the Maharashtra government to issue a circular to all its hospitals directing them to ensure all the postmortems are conducted compulsorily in the presence of a forensic expert. The order comes in response to a plea by a city-based activist, alleging sweepers and helpers conduct autopsy at government or civic-run hospitals.
A bench of Chief Justice Pradeep Nandrajog and Justice Nitin Jamdar was seized with a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) filed by Adil Khatri through advocate Shehzad Naqvi. The petition highlighted the fact that in several hospitals postmortems were being conducted by sweepers or helpers and not the senior doctors. The plea also alleged the due procedure of law was not being followed by government-run hospitals in conducting the autopsy on the dead bodies.
Having considered the contentions, the bench directed the government to issue a circular to the head of forensics department of all hospitals across Maharashtra, making it compulsory for postmortem to be conducted in the presence of a forensics expert.
“The judges have also directed the government to order the hospital authorities to maintain a register, in which the expert can sign and also give a brief description of the postmortem conducted. The bench has also asked the authorities to maintain a separate inward and outward (entry and exit) register to ensure the class IV employees (sweepers) are not allowed to conduct autopsies,” advocate Naqvi said. Naqvi further said that the bench has also directed the government to maintain a separate registry of biometrics to ensure that the forensics expert was physically present during post mortem.
