Post-Mortem Rules in India: New Protocol for Post-Mortem Procedure

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Post-Mortem Rules in India: Relevance

GS 2: Issues relating to development and management of Social Sector/Services relating to Health, Education, Human Resources.

Recently, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare has notified new protocol for Post-Mortem or autopsy procedure.

Changes have been made in the post-mortem protocols to allow for the procedure to be conducted after sunset to promote ease of living by reducing burden imposed due to compliance to government processes.
Apart from friends and relatives of the deceased, this new procedure also promotes organ donation and transplant as organs can be harvested in the stipulated time window after the procedure.
In view of the rapid advancement and improvement in technology, especially availability of required lighting and infrastructure required for post-mortem, performing night time post-mortem in hospitals is now feasible.
The protocol stipulates that post-mortem for organ donation be taken up on priority and be conducted even after sunset at the hospitals which have the infrastructure for conducting such post-mortem on a regular basis.
It is also to be ensured by the facility that video recording of post-mortem shall be done for all post-mortem conducted in the night, to rule out any suspicion and preserved for future reference for Legal purposes.
However, cases under categories such as homicide, suicide, rape, decomposed bodies, suspected foul play should not be subjected for post-mortem during night time unless there is a law-and-order situation.

This Latin phrase literally means ‘after death’. A post mortem examination is a medical examination carried out on the body after death. It is also called an autopsy (which means ‘to see for oneself’).

A number of things that may be determined from an autopsy are:
Establish decedent’s identity.
Establish the cause of death.
Determine the mechanism of death.
Confirm the manner of death.
Confirm medical history.
Separate complicating medical factors.
Rule out disease or factors harmful to public health.
Facilitate adequate photography of wounds, if required.
Correlate wounding and object producing the wounds.
Determine time interval between wounds received and death.
Establish sequence of events.
Retrieve an article involved in mode of death, such as a bullet.
Obtain and examine trace evidence such as hairs, stains, and seminal fluid.
Obtain specimens for toxicology.
Establish order of death in situations where more than one family member has been killed.
To document all injuries in order to answer any future questions that is unknown at the time of the autopsy.