In dowry death cases, a hidden hurdle: India’s forensic autopsy system
Tampering with autopsy results under pressure, or even a doctor’s lack of knowledge, can severely impact a criminal investigation. Such shoddy forensic evidence plays havoc with investigations in social crimes like dowry death
A young married woman, living in a remote village, found hanging by the noose, is adjudged “dead due to uncertain causes” by the doctor conducting the autopsy. He goes on to preserve her viscera samples for testing to try to ascertain the cause. Despite the registration of an FIR by the victim’s parents alleging a dowry death, the autopsy report renders it impossible for the police to arrest the alleged accused until the results from the viscera testing are received, a procedure which could take more than a year. Despite the presence of a clearly visible ligature mark on the victim’s neck, the doctor conducting the autopsy, ignorantly or deliberately, takes no stand at all on whether the hanging was ante-mortem or post-mortem.
In the case of an ante mortem hanging, the accused could be arrested immediately for abetment to suicide or dowry death, while a post mortem hanging points to murder being camouflaged as suicide. The victim’s family staged a few days of protest against the police’s failure to arrest the accused until they could no longer afford to lose another day’s wages. An appeal by the police to review the apparently incomplete autopsy report is dismissed by the district medical authorities as unfeasible due to the non-availability of any videography of the autopsy, poor-quality pictures from the scene of the crime, and the victim’s body already having been cremated.
Such subversion of important forensic evidence, considered the most crucial component of criminal investigation, is common, particularly in cases of homicide or while trying to distinguish homicide from suicide. The distortion in the autopsy report may be due to institutional incompetence, malfeasance or sheer lack of resources.
It takes national outrage over the suspicious death of Twisha Sharma, an educated, vibrant, and promising woman, allegedly a victim of abuse and torture by a lawyer husband and a mother-in-law — a former Judge — to persuade a high court to order a repeat autopsy of the victim’s body by a team of doctors from the country’s premier healthcare institution. Even in such a high-profile case, while her family appealed to the High Court for a second autopsy, the victim’s body was kept in the mortuary at AIIMS Bhopal at -4 degrees Celsius — way higher than is needed to preserve a body for a longer duration. No requisite preservation facility was found available anywhere in the state capital.
Without prejudice to the facts of the case of Twisha Sharma, there is no denying the fact that the collection of forensic evidence, particularly autopsies, remains vulnerable to distortions. In most states, medico-legal autopsies are carried out only at government hospitals or medical colleges, which denies an opportunity to students at private institutions to have any practical knowledge of the criticality and fine nuances of autopsies. On the other hand, government doctors, fatigued from their tremendous patient load, a huge number of routine autopsies on account of daily accidental deaths and miscellaneous administrative tasks, working in largely decrepit and poorly ventilated post-mortem houses, carry out perfunctory autopsy procedures with compromised quality. Only in particularly sensitive or sensational cases does the police request that the autopsy be conducted by a panel of doctors with videography. However, the output of the so-called videography by untrained persons is mostly amateurish and hardly useful for a constructive review of the autopsy, if required.
Tampering with autopsy results under pressure, or even a doctor’s lack of knowledge, can severely impact a criminal investigation. Such shoddy forensic evidence plays havoc with investigations in social crimes like dowry death, which are, as it is, most prone to being informally settled between the two families concerned on payment of blood money. With robust forensic evidence on record and the corresponding testimony by a forensic expert, the trial court could convict the accused even if the complainants and witnesses choose to turn hostile.
In view of the above, there is an urgent need to consider allowing private hospitals with state-of-the-art infrastructure and well-trained doctors to conduct autopsies. This would not only ease the load on government facilities but would also help launch advanced forensics programmes at private institutions, ultimately producing more qualified forensic medicine experts. The accompanying regulatory and supervisory framework can be put in place by the government to ensure that authorised private hospitals carry out autopsies fairly and transparently and are held accountable to the prescribed standards of probity and legal liability.
There is an urgent need to upgrade and standardise the district-level physical infrastructure where autopsies are conducted to ensure proper ventilation, sufficient lighting and requisite tools. Ceiling or wall-mounted videography systems that are programmed to professionally record the entire process, enabled with AI models like Claude that offer superior video analytics, and mandatory preservation of such recordings, are a pressing necessity. In cases demanding DNA matching and viscera testing, there is a vital need to expand and upgrade the network of forensic labs led by duly trained professionals for time-bound testing and speedy justice.
Finally, what is most imperative is that those involved in instances of wilful tampering or negligence in the collection and handling of forensic evidence are held to account by the authorities concerned or the courts. Otherwise, we risk jeopardising even the sanctity of science as a potent aid in the pursuit of justice.
The writer is an IPS officer. Views expressed are personal
