Plea for holding of autopsy during night dismissed

A division bench comprising Justice S Manikumar and Justice Subramonium Prasad, said, “The contention of the petitioner that post-mortem has not been conducted probably, due to poor lighting, is without any basis. On the other hand, an expert committee of doctors, in the field of Forensic Medicine, has considered several issues before arriving at a decision as to why postmortem is not feasible, during night hours.”

Further, the bench extracted the expert committee views on the issue which said, “It is of no doubt that conducting night post-mortem would bring happiness to some people, only by way of getting the dead body early, even in the night time. But it is very pertinent to consider the negative impact that would result in improper crime investigation, faulty observation, wrong analysis of the findings in the dead body and ultimately miscarriage of justice to the society at large, due to the night postmortems.”

Also, on citing various other reasons cited by the expert committee in not holding night postmortem, which included mixing up of dead bodies, law and order problems, colour Status, time of assault, time of death, cause of death and postmortem artefacts said, “Some of the instances cited by the petitioner’s counsel, wherein postmortems have been conducted, even during night hours, is not the decision of the government.”

“In one of the instances, the Theni District Collector, has directed postmortem to be conducted during night hours. Random instances at one or two places, is not the decision of the government and the reasons for such postmortem conducted during night hours, could not be deciphered from the orders,” the bench added while directing the petitioner to pay up the cost to the account of Juvenile Justice Fund.