Madras High Court Seeks Centre's Response On Plea For Digitisation Of Medico-Legal Documents

The case came up before the bench of Acting Chief Justice T Raja and Justice D Krishnakumar.

The petitioner, Dr Mohammed Khader Meeran, submitted that Medico Legal Examination and Postmortem Reporting (MedLeaPR) is a software developed by the National Informatics Centre (NIC) to issue various medico-legal reports and certificates digitally and to store the data in cloud storage in encrypted form. This software is presently being used by many states and union territories in the country.

The Madras High Court had also directed to implement this software in the state of Tamil Nadu by January 1st 2021. Even though more than an year has passed, no effort has been made by any authority to implement the same, it was averred. There is no standard proforma that exists in the State, the petitioner added.

He also contended that the present proforma is not at all at par with the standards prescribed by the Supreme Court in Samira Kohli Vs Dr. Prabha Manchanda & Anr., Civil Appeal No.1949 of 2004.

The petitioner also submitted that documents like Injury Report, Post-Mortem Report (including viscera/chemical analysis report), report of examination after Sexual assault, age estimation reports have legal importance. Therefore, if these are computerised, it would increase the efficiency of hospital administration, governments and the judiciary also.

Thus, the petitioner sought directions from the court to implement this software in all the Government hospitals.