MADURAI: Criticising the authorities of the Tirunelveli Medical College hospital for conducting a postmortem examination of the Kadayam ‘custodial death’ victim in the night, the Madurai Bench of Madras High Court directed the state to file a status report along with the autopsy report and its video footage in a sealed cover on Wednesday.

Justice R Pongiappan was hearing a petition filed by the victim’s wife Palammal who sought direction to conduct re-postmortem on her husband alleging that there were violations in the earlier postmortem as it was done at night without intimating her or her family.

During the hearing, Additional Advocate General (AAG) K Chellapandian admitted that the postmortem had been conducted on July 23 evening and had been completed only by 9 pm. Hearing the same, Justice Pongiappan referred to a judgment passed by the High Court in 2019, wherein it had been stated that no autopsy should be performed after 4 pm. Pointing out that the judgment had been circulated to deans of all government hospitals, he questioned why the authorities violated the norms prescribed in it.

The judge also refused to accept the explanation given by the State Public Prosecutor Natarajan that due to continuous agitation made by the victim’s family, the Tenkasi district collector had sent a letter requesting the Dean of Tirunelveli hospital to conduct the postmortem immediately. The authorities should not have violated the order under any circumstances, he held and gave the above direction.

Palammal was the wife of the farmer Anaikarai Muthu who died in the custody of Kadayam Forest Range officials last week. She had approached the court seeking a slew of directions which included re-postmortem of her husband, registering of murder case against officials involved in his death, compensation to her family and CB-CID probe into the incident.