A team of doctors from the Government Rajaji Hospital (GRH) here exhumed the body of a 47-year-old woman at the Thathaneri burial ground and conducted a re-postmortem on Saturday.
The re-postmortem was conducted based on a directive from Justice N. Kirubakaran of Madras High Court Bench through an order dated August 28. The woman, Ethinammal, was reportedly a mentally challenged inmate of a home for the destitute run by Akshaya Trust here.
Originally, V. Kumaresan (37) of Bharathiyar Nagar had filed a petition in the Madras High Court Bench claiming that Ethinammal had died under “mysterious circumstances” on August 22.
According to the petitioner, the doctor had issued an autopsy certificate to the trust on August 23 without conducting a proper postmortem. The certificate indicated that there were no marks of violence or injuries on the body and that the woman could have died of “bilateral pulmonary tuberculosis.” However, photographs of the woman’s body revealed that there were multiple injuries on her face, chest and neck. The histo-pathology test was not done to determine that Ethinammal died due to tuberculosis. There was also no mention of examination to determine possible rape, he had noted.
In his order, Justice Kirubakaran had observed that there was a contradiction regarding the remarks in the postmortem report and photograph of the deceased. He had directed the Nagamalai Pudukottai police to make arrangements to exhume the body and ordered constitution of a team of doctors from the GRH to conduct a re-postmortem.
On Saturday, the body of Ethinammal was exhumed in the presence of police revenue officials, staff from Akshaya Trust and petitioner’s counsels R. Alagumani and B. Dhanasekaran around 11.30 a.m. Senior surgeons and forensic experts performed re-postmortem. An initial report is expected to be submitted to the court on Tuesday.
