Telangana HC Directs Handover of Maoists’ Bodies to Kin, Declines Re-Postmortem

Hyderabad: The Telangana High Court on Tuesday refused to give directions for a re-postmortem of the seven bodies of the Maoists, who were killed in a gunfight with police on Sunday in Mulugu district.

The court directed the police to hand over the bodies, except that of Mallaiah if relatives of the deceased come to receive them. Further, it directed the police to preserve Mallaiah’s body till Thursday by which time the police were ordered to submit a report of the post-mortem examination (PME) conducted by the forensic experts.

Justice B. Vijaysen Reddy was dealing with the petition filed by Kalavala Ilamma Meena, wife of Mallaiah, seeking directions to the DGP and SP, Mulugu to register a crime u/s 103 of BNS into the incident of an alleged police encounter, permit the petitioner to be part of the inquest and a direction to call for FIR and other records pertaining to the encounter.

On Monday, the judge heard the petition and directed the police to preserve the bodies till further hearing on Tuesday. Meanwhile, the judge had directed the police to give its version of the contentions of the petitioner on the alleged encounter and regarding non-following of the procedure while conducting a post-mortem.

On Tuesday, Mahesh Raje, government counsel for home, informed the court that the postmortem of the seven bodies had been performed at the Area Hospital, Eturunagaram adhering to the prescribed procedure scrupulously. A team of eight doctors comprising forensic experts performed the PME and the report is awaited. He further said that the wife and petitioner in the writ petition, Illamma (wife of Malliah), was permitted to see the body of her husband.

Suresh Kumar, counsel for the petitioner, objected and submitted that the police had allowed the petitioner to see her husband`s body for five to 10 minutes only and during this time, the petitioner identified eleven injuries on the body and demanded that the inquest of Malliah's body be done in the presence of jurisdictional judicial magistrate as it was done in the presence of an executive magistrate.

Further, the counsel for the petitioner contended that the death of seven Maoists is a custodial death as they were held captives by police and then gunned down and reiterated that the inquest should be done in the presence of a judicial magistrate only as per NHRC guidelines.

Considering the arguments of both sides, the court observed that logical ends need to be given to the issue and it cannot prolong on one and other reasons.

However, the court also viewed that we cannot deviate from the procedure and whereas the PME was already videographed and photographs of bodies have been taken… bodies were shown to the petitioner as desired… what more you want…, the bodies should be handed over to relatives, the court said.