The Madras High Court on Tuesday directed the State government to complete post-mortem on the bodies of all of those who had died in police firing during protests against the Sterlite Copper smelter in Thoothukudi on May 22 and 23 and hand over the bodies to the family members at the earliest.
The First Division Bench of Chief Justice Indira Banerjee and Justice P.T. Asha issued the directive after it was informed that post-mortem was yet to be conducted on six out of the 13 bodies due to an interim order passed by another Division Bench on May 23 to preserve the dead bodies until further orders.
The interim order was passed on a public interest litigation petition filed by a group of three lawyers who suspected that the post-mortem might not be conducted properly and insisted that a forensic expert of their choice be included in the panel of experts constituted for conducting autopsy.
Advocate General Vijay Narayan brought it to the notice of the first Bench that the State government had initially conducted post- mortem only on seven bodies and not the rest for want of cooperation from the relatives. In the meantime, the court ordered that all the 13 bodies should be preserved and not handed over to the relatives. Subsequently on May 30, a different Division Bench modified the interim order and permitted the government to hand over the seven bodies alone to the respective family members after conducting re-post-mortem by a special team of three forensic experts and by following elaborate guidelines laid down by the court.
SC ‘no’ to urgent hearing
Though this Bench also directed that the same team of experts should conduct post-mortem on the rest of the six bodies too, it kept the directive under suspension for a week since the PIL petitioners wanted to approach the Supreme Court seeking inclusion of a forensic expert of their choice.
However, the Supreme Court refused to take up their plea as an urgent case, and hence, they had approached the High Court once again, the AG said. After taking note of his submissions, the first Bench held that it was not advisable to preserve the bodies when it was very clear that 12 out of 13 deaths were due to bullet wounds.
Further holding that the family members and not PIL litigants should have a say in the matter, the Bench ordered that a special team of forensic experts conduct the post-mortem on the rest of the six bodies only if the blood relatives approach the district administration and give such a request in writing. If any of the family members wanted to take back the bodies at the earliest for performing final rites, their plea should be acceded to at the earliest by conducting the post-mortem through a regular team of forensic experts and after following procedures such a videographing the entire process and preserving the bullets recovered from the bodies, the Bench said.
