CLOSED BY SUNSET: The post-mortem centre at Bowring Hospital in Bangalore — Photo: K. Bhagya Prakash

Bangalore: Three years after the Government brought in legislation to facilitate holding of autopsies after sunset, Bowring and Lady Curzon Hospital occasionally complies with the direction. In 2003, the Government decided to roll back the practice of not performing autopsies in the evening, based on the recommendations of a three-member committee. The committee members, in their report, said they found that some of the guidelines laid down for autopsies in Modi's Medical Jurisprudence did not suit the present day scenario.

"Modi's book did not recommend performing autopsies in the evening because of the frequent power cuts a century ago. At that time, they also did not have strong lights for evening. But the situation had changed and autopsies can be performed as well at night," said a committee member.

Bowring and Lady Curzon Hospital, in most cases, still does not perform autopsies in the evening. A board outside the mortuary states that post-mortems would be conducted only between 9 a.m. and 4 p.m. When this reporter asked whether post-mortems were conducted in the evenings, a department authority pointed to the board and said: "Can't you see, we have written the timings. We work till 4 p.m."

This practice of the hospital is giving a lot of hardship to families of victims of unnatural death. In the case of a girl who committed suicide, her family had to wait almost 15 hours for the post-mortem to be conducted.

In another case, the reporter found the body of a man left unattended on the corridor of the hospital. It had been there from the previous evening. When questioned, the hospital authority said that the cold storage was full and that the body would be taken care of the next day. "We cannot immediately take care of everything. We have other work to look into as well," he said. The hospital authority said that post- mortems are conducted in the evening only under "special circumstances." "We do not have enough people with us. So, we do post-mortems in the evening only in special cases such as police emergencies and VIPs," he said.

Bowring and Lady Curzon Hospital gets murder, suicide and poison cases from the north and east divisions of the city police. On an average, it gets at least two cases of unnatural deaths every day.

The hospital authority in Bowring and Lady Curzon said that the hospital could not perform autopsies at night because there were no doctors available. There are only two doctors in Bowring and Lady Curzon to perform autopsies. Both these doctors are available during the day.

P.K. Devadas, Head of the Department of Forensic Sciences, Bangalore Medical College, who controls the functioning of the department in Victoria and Bowring and Lady Curzon Hospital, said "on duty call" system had been developed to fill in for the lack of a doctor at nights in Bowring and Lady Curzon.

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