NEW DELHI: The Delhi High Court Friday sought response from a district hospital in Uttar Pradesh, which conducted a post-mortem on the 25-year-old farmer who died after his tractor overturned during the farmers’ protest rally on Republic Day last year. It was hearing a plea alleging that there is an ‘apparent anomaly’ in the X-ray of the deceased.
Justice Rajnish Bhatnagar, was dealing with an application by the deceased’s grandfather who has filed the petition for court-monitored SIT probe into the death. The judge asked the advocate for the petitioner to supply a copy of the application to the counsel for the Uttar Pradesh officials and said ‘reply, if any, be filed in four weeks’ and posted the matter for next hearing on May 11.
In the application, the petitioner, represented by lawyers Vrinda Grover and Soutik Banerjee, alleged that the X-ray plates have ‘not been prepared as per usual practice’ which casts a serious doubt concerning their sanctity. The plea said that it is emphasised that the X-ray reports are crucial in determining whether the deceased suffered any firearm injury.
The application stated that the post-mortem report made no mention if the X-ray was done prior to the post-mortem and no reference is made to the same by the doctor before providing his opinion regarding the cause of death.
‘The X-ray plates have evidently not been prepared as per usual practice, and writing the name of the deceased by hand on an already prepared X-ray plate raises serious doubts,’ said the application which has sought to know the same from the district hospital authorities.