Bengaluru hospitals in quandary over new post-mortem rule

Several hospitals are awaiting clarity, with one doctor wondering as to who will take a call on the law and order situation matter

The Union government’s November 15 memorandum to refrain from conducting post-mortems after sunset in five categories — homicide, suicide, rape, suspected foul play and decomposed body — except if there is a law and order situation has put hospitals in Bengaluru in a bind.

Several hospitals, which have been doing post-mortems in these categories even after sunset since 2003, are awaiting clarity, with one doctor wondering as to who will take a call on the law and order situation matter.

While Victoria Hospital, which does 3,500 post-mortems every year, said henceforth they’ll need a letter from the area deputy commissioner of police on whether there is a law and order situation, Bowring Hospital said they won’t be doing it.

The new directive comes with its challenges, said doctors.

Explaining the difficulty in complying with the Union health ministry’s order, a forensic medicine doctor at Victoria Hospital said, “We get a lot of cases of jail deaths and the magistrate comes late. So we receive the body only after 5 pm, how can we do the autopsy before sunset?”

Dr S Venkata Raghava, in-charge HOD of Forensic Medicine, Victoria Hospital, raised another issue.

“In murder cases, for our safety, we used to take a letter from the concerned deputy commissioner of police (DCP),” said Dr Raghava. “Now we don’t know what to do because they’ve disallowed post-mortems in suicide cases after sunset in that memorandum. We have to write to the home secretary. We also don’t know who decides if the law and order situation merits doing the post-mortems after sunset.”

City Police Commissioner Kamal Pant did not respond to calls from DH.

Dr Dinesh Rao, who did the first autopsy of a Covid positive patient in the state, batted for conducting post-mortems at any time of the day, like in the West.

“There’s no question of doing an autopsy, even of a decomposed body, in natural light in an open mortuary like here. How will you control flies? We are severely lacking in resources and ideal settings in our morgues. Though the government order is in the right direction, I don’t see why autopsies in all types of cases can’t be done at any time of the day,” he said.

His comment is significant as morgues in government medical colleges are not air-conditioned. For example, forensic medicine doctors in Victoria said that post-mortem of a decomposed body is done in an open mortuary because of the smell.

But Dr K V Satish, HOD, Forensic Medicine, Bowring and Lady Curzon Hospital, said the rule will help hospitals which are short-staffed.

“If we need things like bottles to store samples, nail cutters for nail clippings or envelopes, we can’t search these things in an emergency situation at 1 am past midnight,” he said, adding that they had rejected many custodial death cases that came in the evening.

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