Tuticorin police firing: Madras HC orders postmortem on remaining six bodies

CHENNAI: The Madras high court on Tuesday directed authorities to conduct postmortem on the bodies of the remaining six out of 13 people killed in police firing on the anti-Sterlite protesters in Tuticorin on May 22.
The postmortem shall be conducted as directed by the court on May 30 in the presence of an expert from either AIIMS or JIPMER or Government Medical College in Thiruvananthapuram, only if the families of the deceased demand so.

In the absence of any such demand, autopsy shall be conducted as done usually. However, in any case, safeguards like video recording of the procedure and preserving bullets or any other foreign material, if any, should be followed, the first bench of Chief Justice Indira Banerjee and Justice P T Asha said.

On May 30, partly allowing PILs moved by three people including an advocate, a vacation bench of the court ordered re-postmortem on seven bodies. The bench stayed autopsy on the remaining six for a week since the petitioners wanted to move an appeal in the Supreme Court to include a doctor of their choice in the autopsy team. The stay expires on Wednesday.

The petitioners alleged that the state had failed to follow the court directives in including an expert to the team.

Advocate Shankarasubbu also wanted the court to allow an impleading petition moved by the of deceased Jancy, Jayaraman and Glatson seeking postmortem in the presence of expert.

Denying the allegation, advocate general Vijay Narayan submitted that an expert from JIPMER was included in the team as per the directions of the court.

Recording the submissions, the bench noted that the incident was very unfortunate which required a probe. “But at present, we are more concerned about completing the autopsy and handing over the bodies to relatives without any further delay,” the court said.