It is a death that has shaken the Honnavar town in Karnataka’s Uttara Kannada district. A death that has evoked such strong emotions that doctors at the Taluk Hospital did not even want to be part of the post mortem.
The autopsy of eighteen-year-old Paresh Mesta was finally done by three doctors from Kasturba Hospital in Manipal who were brought to the taluk hospital.
Though the post mortem report is not officially out, word has spread in the town about how the Hindu activist was reportedly tortured before his body was found floating in the Shettykere lake on Friday night.
On Monday evening, IGP Western Range Hemanth Nimbalkar categorically denied that any assault or torture had taken place. Nimbalkar also released a letter from Dr Shankar M Bakkannavar, Associate Professor at the Department of Forensic Medicine at the Kasturba Medical College, Manipal. The forensic science expert has answered 19 questions in which he has asserted that there was no external or internal injury, no torture and no strangulation or haemorrhage. The report however mentions two injuries, and that one could have been caused by blunt force.
In the answers to the questionnaire submitted to the police, the forensic expert says that, "There are no evidences of injuries caused by weapons over the body of the deceased."
A picture of Paresh's dead body, with his blackened face, had been widely circulated on social media. When asked whether the change in colour of the face was due to assault, the expert said that it was only due to putrefaction (process of decay of a body). The report also denies that a tattoo on the deceased's body was removed. It says, "There is a tattoo mark present over the front of right forearm, 7cm above the wrist, depicting a picture of Shivaji and Maratha written in Hindi." It categorically states that the tattoo has not been destroyed.
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