Revamping our medico-legal system

A society can only enjoy liberty, freedom, economic independence and human rights if its criminal justice system performs in the right way. The criminal justice system works accurately if its organs – police, prosecution, judiciary and prisons – work with dedication and in a professional manner.

The medico-legal system is an integral part of prosecution. Its services are required in cases of violence, abuse, criminal liability, trauma, age estimation, exhumations and post-mortem examinations to ascertain facts in criminal cases.

The Youhanabad tragedy not only exposed the inefficiency of the police as well as religious intolerance in our society, but also put a question mark on the working and capacity of the Punjab medico-legal department. On the day of the incident, 18 bodies were rushed to a nearby hospital for post-mortem. Owing to insufficient facilities, the post-mortems were delayed, prompting heirs of the deceased to attack the mortuary so that they could take possession of the bodies of their loved ones. Amid the mayhem, the medico-legal department should have played its assigned role of conducting post-mortems with urgency, but it lacked the capacity and commitment to do the job efficiently.

After the incident, I visited a surgeon of the medico-legal office to get some information about the contribution of the office in conducting post-mortems and I was astonished to know that the office had received no information through official channels regarding the incident. The condition of the office was so dilapidated that one could easily gauge its performance and contribution to the criminal justice system. It is evident that the medico-legal service is obsolete in terms of training, professionalism and specialised input.

The Youhanabad incident exposed the working of our medico-legal experts. In cases of mass casualties, like bomb blasts, air crashes, big fires, earthquakes and floods, there is no spacious facility to conduct autopsies of dead bodies. In disaster situations, international protocol demands that there should be a mobile mortuary to conduct autopsies on the spot and hand over bodies to heirs immediately. This would help investigators to commence their work in a timely manner too. There is an urgent need to revamp the existing medico-legal system. Even in India, mobile mortuaries are used but here the heirs of the deceased have to wait for a long time to receive the bodies of their loved ones.

There is a need to redesign the medico-legal system on modern lines, outline standard operating procedures and inject professionalism to deal with incidents resulting in mass casualties. The Youhanabad tragedy really proved to be a debacle for the medico-legal system in Punjab.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 5^th, 2015.