British rule over!

New Delhi. The central government has allowed post-mortem of dead bodies after sunset in hospitals with proper infrastructure, except in cases of murder, suicide, rape, mutilated bodies and suspicious cases. Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya himself gave this information by tweeting on Monday. He wrote, “The system of British times is over! The postmortem will be done 24 hours. Taking forward the idea of ​​’Good Governance’ of PM Narendra Modi, the Health Ministry has decided that the hospitals which have the facility to conduct the postmortem at night will now be able to do the postmortem even after sunset.

The Health Ministry said, “In response to the multiple references received from various sources to the Union Ministry of Health and in line with the Government’s commitment to promote ease of living by reducing the compliance burden of government procedures, the postmortem protocol after sunset, effective from today. Changes have been made.” “Apart from friends and relatives of the deceased, this new procedure also promotes organ donation and transplantation as organs can be removed within a stipulated period of time after the procedure,” it said.

Several representations received by the ministry in this regard were examined by a technical committee of the Directorate General of Health Services, Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. The ministry said it was discussed that some institutions are already conducting postmortem during night time and in view of rapid progress and improvement in technology, especially with regard to availability of necessary lighting and necessary infrastructure for postmortem. It is now possible to conduct night-time self-examinations in moving hospitals.

It said that the relevant protocol states that the postmortem for organ donation should be done on priority and it should be done even after sunset in those hospitals which have the infrastructure to conduct such postmortem on regular basis. The Health Ministry said that the soundness of the infrastructure, inter alia, will be assessed by the hospital in-charge to ensure that the value of evidence is not undermined.

It underlined that also, video recording will be done for all the postmortems throughout the night to remove any doubts and it will be preserved for future reference for legal purposes. However, the cases of murder, suicide, rape, mutilated bodies and suspicious categories should not be kept for postmortem during night time, unless there is a law and order situation, the ministry said.