HC orders judicial inquiry into delay in prisoner's postmortem

The Delhi High Court today ordered a judicial inquiry into a four-day delay in conducting autopsy of a prisoner who died of pneumonia last month.
A bench of Chief Justice N V Ramana and Justice Jagmohan said, "We direct the District Judge North West to conduct an inquiry..."
"We will fix the responsibility. Whether the negligence was on the part of police, health department or the judge, we will pass the order," the bench also said.
Expressing displeasure over the incident, the bench said, "You stop giving medicines when people are alive but at least do your job when they die..."

The court was hearing a PIL alleging that the Rohini Jail authorities had failed to conduct postmortem of the prisoner Gaurav allegedly due to a holiday last month.
Taking serious note on the lapse, the high court had earlier demanded an explanation on why the postmortem of the murder accused was delayed.

The court had sought the jail administration, the local SHO and the magistrate concerned's reply on it.
Shifting the blame, police had claimed that the delay was on the part of dealing magistrate S K Sethi in passing orders.
The petition, filed by Avadh Kaushik, said that Gaurav, along with his brother Rahul, was facing trial before a Rohini court in a 2012 murder case.

During the pendency of the trial, Gaurav fell ill and was admitted in Baba Saheb Ambedkar Hospital on November 6 and on November 15 he died but the autopsy was not conducted till November 19, the petition said.
"Despite repeated requests, neither police nor jail authorities came to explain the facts and further procedure to the family members of the deceased prisoner nor any hospital authorities took any step for conducting a post-mortem of the body of the prisoner," the petition alleged.
"It was told that November 15 being a holiday on account of Muharram, nothing can be done. Since then, nothing has been done and the family members and relatives of the deceased prisoner are still sitting in the corridor of the hospital...," Kaushik had said and sought the high court to conduct the autopsy of the deceased immediately.

The bench in its last hearing had ordered the authorities to conduct the postmortem.