He is known to all by his nickname Sikandar, a middle-aged man who looks younger than his age and full of life but far from being an ordinary man.
He has spent most of his life with dead bodies for over three decades and what may sound unreal is he has dissected a hundred thousand corpses, which in the language of pathologists is called autopsy.
Sikandar thinks he might have set a new world record in the process that should earn him a place in the Guinness Book of Records.
With his steady hands, Sikandar has been conducting postmortem examinations as a mortuary assistant at the Forensic Medicine Department of the Dhaka Medical College (DMC) for the past 33 years. Sikandar has never been scared of blood or never chickened out on autopsy when he encountered decomposed bodies or severed limbs. He did not enroll in a Medical College throughout his life yet certified physicians often come to him for helpful advice. To them, he is nothing short of a ‘death detective’.
Sikandar was born in a Hindu family and was named Romesh Das. Some 10 years back, he converted to Islam and chose the name “Sikandar” for himself. The medical examiner bared his soul out to the Dhaka Tribune recently as he took a trip down the memory lane and detailed how it was like to be inside the mortuary room.
“I was 10 or 12 years old. Both my father Shonkor Das and my uncle Robi Das were morgue assistants. My father used to work at the DMC’s Anatomy Department while my uncle was with Forensic Medicine Department. We used to live at a quarter next to the DMCH,” Sikandar reminisced, while talking about his upbringing.
In 1980, his uncle Robi Das died leaving behind his only daughter and wife. Sikandar was a student of Class VIII at Palashi School at that time. Being the eldest son of the combined family, he had no other option but to take up his uncle’s job to manage family expenses.
In his early days, Sikandar did not find the job easy at all. “I used to be scared and terrified all the time for the first two months. The scenario inside the small morgue room was ghastly. There were decapitated bodies, severed intestine and rotten corpses all around. I used to pace outside to escape from acrid stench. This is what I used to see at daytime; what I felt at night was even more horrible.”
While walking past the morgue room, young Romesh (now Sikandar) used to be left wondering if he really had heard voices from the morgue. To allay his fear, he used to peek through its door. But it ignited more panic, as he was afraid that the corpses might grab him.
These bouts of panic attack didn’t last long. All his fears subsided and things calmed down.
Talking about Sikandar, a few ex-doctors at Forensic Medicine Department said he is an artist as far as performing postmortem is concerned. Just like an artist who mastered in his craft with some basic tools, Sikandar does the best that can be done to help discover the cause of death.
Over time, he excelled in even the subtle nuances related with autopsy. Merely by casting a cursory glance over corpses, Sikandar can tell most of the time how and why they breathed their last. It is his sincerity and perseverance that had brought him to this point, they mentioned.
Sikandar said it saddens him when he watches so many people had to face death altogether. But performing autopsy on the murdered children is what upsets him most. His hands still tremble when he went to deal with the little bodies.
There are some incidents in his service life that Sikandar finds difficult to forget. The killing of Dr Shamsul Haque Milon during the anti-autocratic movement in 1990 is one of them.
“I had talked with Dr Milon even 30 minutes before his death. I will never forget the shock and dread I felt seeing his body at morgue,” he noted.
Decades after he is on the job, the medical examiner still remembers the memory of his first autopsy that he thinks was very draining mentally.
“A 20-year-old boy was stabbed to death by robbers at Sreepur, Gazipur. It was my first day at the job. The duty doctor asked the young me to make an incision from its throat to belly. My hand was trembling. I recalled the Almighty’s name and then did what the doctor told me to. The doctor’s appreciation about my work finally set my mind at ease,” he said.
The mortuary assistant is particularly popular among the doctors at Forensic Medicine Department. They shut their eyes and try to take rest when Sikandar carries out autopsy. He always gives his opinion as to what actually caused the death, even before asking. In most cases, doctors don’t find any reason to disagree with him.
To many medical college students, Sikandar is like an undeclared teacher. They always rush to him if they need to know anything about dissection.
Sikandar used to dream about being a football player in his childhood. But now, he doesn’t at all lament the career he was forced to choose. “I believe the step I took have been absolutely perfect for me,” he said.
Father of three, Sikandar thinks, since the job is very grueling, the government should facilitate training and increase salaries of mortuary assistants to make it a rewarding job and their lives easier.
