At least four people, including two policemen, were injured when relatives of two dead patients tried to obstruct law enforcers from conducting an autopsy on their bodies at Dhaka Medical College Hospital yesterday morning.
According to police, Tahmina Akter, 34, her grandfather Posir Khan, 95, and another woman named Sumi, 30, were rushed to DMCH after a speeding truck hit their auto-rickshaw in the capital’s Demra area on early hours of yesterday. Later, doctors declared Tahmina and her grandfather dead.
However, relatives of the deceased were not ready to allow police to conduct the autopsies on the bodies, which is a legal requirement for unnatural deaths.
Jakir Hossain Khan, cousin of the deceased, told Dhaka Tribune, “Doctors at the emergency unit did not provide proper treatment and after my sister and grandfather died, the DMCH outpost police declined to hand over the bodies without an autopsy. But, we did not want the autopsy.”
DMCH outpost police Inspector Mozammel Hauque said: “In accident-related cases, it is mandatory to conduct an autopsy. If the relatives do not want that [the autopsy], they have to take permission from the respective police station of the area where the accident took place. But the relatives wanted to take the bodies out without the autopsy and declined to take permission from the respective police station.”
“When we informed Demra police, they came and completed all formalities and then handed over the bodies to the family members,” he added. Demra police seized the truck responsible for the accident, but could not nab the driver yet.
Meanwhile, a student of Dhaka International Polytechnic Institute died at DMCH yesterday after being critically injured in a road accident at the capital’s Airport road on May 30.