Kerala: Doctor Hithesh Sanker questions fever death post-mortems

THRISSUR: Assistant Professor at the Forensic Department of Thrissur Medical College and Police Surgeon Dr Hithesh Sanker has come out against the police for unnecessarily sending dead bodies in cases of natural deaths due to heart attack and fever for post mortem examination. Mr Sanker, who had written a book on the alleged forensic lapses on the part of the doctor who was prosecution witness in the sensational rape and murder case in Shornur in which Govindachami was the accused, has said in his Facebook post that the cops themselves could make the call on whether an complete autopsy need to be done during inquest of the bodies and there was no need for sending cases of fever deaths for post-mortem. 

“Such a stand by cops and station house officers reveal lack of proper training in scientific investigation during the training period. In my view, as many as 300 post-mortems are done in Thrissur MCH without proper reason and that is wasting money of government exchequer and time of doctors, attenders and cops. At the time of inquest, the cops clearly make a call in case of natural deaths, if they are properly trained in scientific investigation and CrPC by citing court judgments,” Dr Sanker told DC. He said that the cops just want to be on the safer side in such cases and they were sending dead bodies without even conducting thorough inquest. The relatives of the deceased are also made to suffer due to such unnecessary postmortems, the doctor said.

Dr Sanker who is also the state secretary of Kerala Medico-Legal Society said that the comments of some cops on his post that they could not take any risk was unfortunate and there was no point in doing autopsy in case natural deaths when the relatives of the deceased did not raise any suspicion over the death. His FB post also says that for fever deaths, the cops need to necessarily intimate the health department rather than referring for autopsy.