Kallakurichi Student Suicide: Madras High Court Allows Re-Postmortem Without Parents

The Madras High Court on Tuesday allowed the State of Tamil Nadu to conduct re-postmortem of a student who allegedly died by suicide in Kallakurichi in Tamil Nadu, without the presence of her parents.

The order was passed by Justice N Satish Kumar after the State Public Prosecutor Hasan Mohammed Jinnah made an urgent mention that the whereabouts of the deceased's parents could not be traced and that the team of doctors, constituted as per the orders of the court, was waiting for conducting the procedure of autopsy. However, the court also directed that if any one of the parents comes for the procedure, they could be present during the autopsy.

Earlier, the court had allowed a re-postmortem to be conducted by a group of three doctors and a retired forensic director to be appointed by the court. Later, a division bench of Justice M Duraiswamy and Justice Sunder Mohan turned down a mention made by the girl's father seeking the inclusion of a doctor of his choice during re-postmortem. 

Deceased's father then made an oral plea before the Supreme Court seeking the same relief, which was rejected, observing that the High Court was already seized of the matter. 

After the Supreme Court rejected the plea of the father, the Tamil Nadu Government approached the High Court as the parents were not available for the autopsy procedure. The hospital authorities pasted a notice at the residence of the parents informing them about the autopsy procedure and carried on with the procedure as per the orders of the court. 

The girl died on a private school premises over alleged mistreatment by the authorities. This was followed by a violent protest in the area.

Thus, a Special Investigation Team (SIT) was constituted as per the directions of the court to probe into the rioting, arson, and connected incidents that occurred in Kallakurichi on Sunday. The SIT is headed by Tr. Praveen Kumar Abhinapu IPS, Deputy Inspector General of Police. The SIT is to unearth the entire conspiracy behind the incident and identify the violators, and persons who formed Whatsapp groups and instigated the rioting situation. The SIT is also to take appropriate action to identify the Youtubers who had spread false news and conducted parallel media trial in Youtube and to block such Youtube channels.