The viscera samples drawn from the autopsy of Arun Sharma, the dean of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose Medical College in Madhya Pradesh, who was found dead in a hotel room here under mysterious circumstances, were Monday handed over to Delhi Police for further tests in an advanced laboratory.
One of the panelists who conducted the autopsy at the Safdarjung Hospital confirmed that the viscera samples have been handed over to the police and the cause of the death will be ascertained once the report is out.
According to Col. M.K. Sharma, the deceased's brother-in-law, who was present during the autopsy, there was no external injury on his body.
"The doctors said no metallic or any external object was found in the body. The report will come out tomorrow, but we will have to wait at least for two days for the viscera report. The doctors also said that they cannot comment on the autopsy report at the initial stage, but will arrive at a conclusion after discussions," Col. Sharma told IANS over the phone.
Expressing his mystification over the exact causes of the death, he said that once the viscera report was out, only then it was possible to ascertain if there was any impurity or anything mixed in the food.
He also said that his brother-in-law was hale and hearty even though he was diabetic.
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"We have taken the body from police and now we will be taking it to Jabalpur for his last rites which will be performed tomorrow (Tuesday)," he said.
Asked why Arun Sharma was in the national capital, he said: "Arun was on his way to Agartala and since there was no direct flight to Agartala from Jabalpur, he had to pass through Delhi."
"I spoke to him about 10 days ago, but he did not sound suspicious of anything."
The body of Arun Sharma was brought to the Safdarjung hospital Monday morning, a day after he was found dead in a hotel on the outskirts of Delhi. A five-member team, headed by the hospital's forensic head Anil Kumar Mittal, was constituted to perform the autopsy.
Sharma was connected with the investigation of Madhya Pradesh Vyavsayik Pareeksha Mandal (Vyapam) scam. He was on his way to Tripura as a member of an inspection team of the Medical Council of India.
The 64-year-old was assisting the Special Task Force (STF) probing the recruitment scam by providing documents on fake medical entrance examinees in the state-run college, police said.
In a similar incident, a Delhi-based TV journalist, Akshay Singh, who was covering the scam, died in Madhya Pradesh's Jhabua after he suddenly fell ill while interviewing the father of scam-accused Namrata Damor, who herself was found dead under mysterious circumstances.
Sudhir Gupta, forensic head of All India Institute of Medical Sciences told IANS that the Madhya Pradesh police chief sent a letter to AIIMS informing that the viscera samples of the deceased journalist would be sent to the hospital for examination.
However till Monday evening, they had not received the samples, he added.
(Sidhartha Dutta can be contacted at siddharthrajgautam@gmail.com and Rupesh Dutta can be reached at rupesh.d@ians.in)