Exhumed body sent to Ranchi for autoposy

RANCHI: Doctors in Latehar have expressed their inability to conduct postmortem on the semi-decomposed body of “speech and hearing impaired” Lukas Minj, who was allegedly killed during an operation by security personnel. The corpse was exhumed by police on Tuesday 14 days after he was buried in the forests of Nagarnao in Burwadih.
William Minj had filed an FIR with Burwadih police alleging that his brother Lukas was killed while grazing cattle on January 31.
“The same day, police launched a major offensive against the Maoists under the name Operation Mass and several people were detained and interrogated,” he said in the complaint. “Since my brother was a speech and hearing impaired, he must not have responded to the calls by the security forces who were combing the jungles and was mistaken to be a rebel.”
After the Latehar doctors refused to carry on the autopsy saying they were not “wellequipped” to do so, the body was sent to the Rajendra Institute of Medical sciences in Ranchi. Burwadih subdivisional police officer Mani Lal Mandal said a medical board had been set up led by Latehar civil surgeon to give a report on the autopsy. “But after observing the semi-decomposed body, the doctors in Latehar expressed their inability to conduct the postmortem saying they are ill equipped. We are sending the body to Ranchi where the medical board can monitor the process in the well-equipped department of forensic medicine and toxicology at the RIMS,” he said.
Villagers claimed that the body was not exhumed in the presence of any police officer or magistrate as mandated by the law. “No magistrate was present when the body was exhumed,” alleged Prakash Minj, Lukas’s elder brother. Refuting the claims, police said that executive magistrate Pramod Das was sent to the spot in the disguise of a “dom” (who help bury or burn a body in a crematorium) so that he was not targeted by Maoists.
“Nagarmao is the last village in Burwadih block that borders Chhattisgarh and given the presence of the Maoists in the region, no government official feels safe in venturing into their domain,” Mandal said explaining why the magistrate did not disclose his identity. Latehar police have made elaborate security arrangements for a day-long bandh call by the Maoists to protest the “killing” of Lukas.