KOTTAYAM: The filing of the amended chargesheet in the death of ayurveda doctor P.A. Baiju will be delayed as the post-mortem report has recommended a chemical analysis test to determine the cause of death. Dr Baiju, who was lying in coma for the last nine years in a private hospital at Kothamangalam, died on Monday. Dr Baiju, who was the medical officer at the government ayurvedic dispensary at Bison Valley, Idukki, had prescribed a medicine for a patient Shanthi who fainted after consuming it.
When her relatives questioned the doctor, he consumed the medicine himself to prove its efficacy and fell unconscious. It was later alleged that Shanthi’s husband Rajappan had mixed the medicine with pesticides to kill her. This happened on January 25, 2007. Dr Baiju died when the trial in the first case was in its final stage. The post-mortem was conducted in the Muvattupuzha general hospital.
The police can file the amended chargesheet in the court only on the basis of the post-mortem or chemical analysis report to substantiate the charge that his death was due to poisoning. The police have changed the case against the accused Rajappan to culpable homicide instead of attempt to murder which was registered previously.
“The doctor who conducted the post-mortem recommended a chemical analysis test. This may delay the filing of the chargesheet till the completion of the chemical analysis test,” Adimaly Circle Inspector T.A. Younus, who is in charge of the case, told DC. He added that the internal organs of Dr Baiju are preserved for the chemical analysis test purpose and will be shortly send to the Forensic Sciences Laboratory at Thiruvananthapuram.
