Post-mortem on stretcher

Faced with shortage of operation tables, overworked Sassoon mortuary docs perform autopsies on stretchers

Kolkata-resident Kamale-ndu Dhar was among the people who had to wait for a day before Sassoon Hospital released the bodies of those who died in Saturday's blast at the German Bakery in Koregaon Park. Dhar lost his children Ankik (23) Anindhyee (19) in the blast that claimed 10 lives.

Such was the shortage of doctors, equipment and post-mortem tables that the forensic experts at Sassoon hospital abandoned all sophistication and conducted the post mortem on two bodies on stretchers!
Said a source at the Sassoon hospital mortuary, said, "I saw them perform two postmortems on stretchers.

Though it looked crude, they did it to perfection. It was a desperate situation as they didn't want to prolong the agony for the relatives."

However, Dr Amol Shinde, forensic expert at Sassoon hospital, denied that postmortems had been performed on stretchers. "It is true that the postmortems took us some time but they were all done on tables as they should be," said Shinde.

"We didn't have an X-Ray machine in the mortuary. Bodies had to be taken by ambulance to the hospital building and brought back. We lost some time in that. Also, taking X-rays on bodies is quite difficult. We also lost time because the police gave us the inquest 10 hours after the explosion, so we started late," explained Shinde.

A source added that two bodies were handed for postmortem almost 24 hours after the blast because they remained unidentified for a long time.