The Madras High Court on Wednesday ordered a fresh post-mortem on the bodies of seven out of the 13 people who died in the police firing last week during the violent protests demanding closure of the Sterlite plant in Thoothukudi.
Justices S. Baskaran and RMT. Teekaa Raman ordered the constitution of a team of three forensic experts, including one from either the All-India Institute of Medical Sciences or the Jawaharlal Institute of Postgraduate Medical Education and Research in Puducherry or the Government Medical College at Thiruvananthapuram in Kerala.
Making it clear that experts from any one of the three institutions could be made part of the three-member team depending upon their availability, the judges said that it should conduct fresh post-mortem in the presence of the same judicial magistrates who were present at the time of the first post-mortem and listed out the features to be observed.
The court ordered re-post-mortem of only seven bodies because Advocate General Vijay Narayan had earlier informed it that the government officials had so far conducted post-mortem only on seven bodies since the family members of six other persons, who had also died in the firing, were not cooperating in the conduct of the post-mortem.
Though the judges, while pronouncing their orders at 8.40 p.m., directed the government to go ahead and conduct post-mortem of the remaining six bodies too through the three-member expert team, they kept the direction in abeyance at about 9 p.m. after advocate R. Sankarasubbu, representing a group of three public interest litigants, objected to it.
‘Preserve six bodies’
Mr. Sankarasubbu contended that the family members of the six individuals who had died should be given an opportunity to convince the court to include a medical expert of their choice in the post-mortem team and till then, the bodies should be ordered to be preserved intact. Accepting his plea, the judges directed the government to preserve those bodies till June 6.
However, in respect of the seven bodies, the Bench said that they could be handed over to the family members of the deceased after the conclusion of the fresh post-mortem. Since the government apprehended law and order problem while handing over the bodies, the court ordered that no one but for victims’ relatives should be allowed in the government hospital.
The services of the District Legal Services Authority in Thoothukudi, Tirunelveli, Kanniyakumari, Virudhunagar and Madurai could be availed to identify the relatives and the government officials concerned should ensure that last rites were conducted without any disturbance to peace and tranquillity, the court said.
The orders were passed on a public interest litigation petition filed by a group of three lawyers who insisted on conducting fresh post-mortem to bring out the truth behind the deaths. Passing interim orders in the case last week, another Division Bench had ordered preservation of all 13 bodies until further orders.
However, on Wednesday, the State government urged the court to modify the order and permit the State to hand over the bodies to families which were willing to accept them and perform final rites. It conceded that 12 out of 13 persons had died due to bullet injuries and that only one appeared to have died due to other reasons such as stampede.
