Controversy over Lucknow woman's autopsy heats up

Lucknow: The controversy surrounding the autopsy of a woman gang raped and murdered near Lucknow in Uttar Pradesh last week turned murkier on Wednesday with the opposition parties accusing the government and police of a whitewash job.

The 32-year-old woman was brutally gang raped and then killed in Mohanlalganj on the outskirts of state capital Lucknow last Thursday. Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav has ordered a probe into the lacunae in the autopsy report of the woman. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Wednesday upped the ante on the case and accused the state government of trying to "bury the controversial case in a jiffy".

Vijay Bahadur Pathak, state spokesman of the BJP, said: "When the body of the deceased had been cremated in a hurry, what was left to re-investigate?" "The family of the victim is showing that she donated a kidney three years back and the post-mortem says that she had both kidneys intact, there are certainly some critical lapses and should be investigated ideally," the BJP leader said.

He said that despite assurance from the Lucknow police chief that the body of the woman would be preserved for 72-hours, it was cremated quietly. "When the object of the autopsy is gone, all talk of trying to find out if the post-mortem report was credible or not is nothing but a sham and a diversionary tactic of the state government to ambush questions on the the police investigation," Pathak added.

Congress spokesman Ashok Singh has also questioned the autopsy report, saying the frequent change of stand by the police and the faulty report were raising many questions. The family of the victim is now pressing for a CBI probe and has threatened self-immolation if the state government does not heed their demand.

Social activists also allege that despite the crime being at the centre of focus in the society and the media, the post-mortem examination report, like the investigations into the case, were botched up under some pressure exerted on the doctors' panel. A six-doctor panel that conducted the autopsy on the victim, however, stuck to its report and maintained that both kidneys were present in the woman's body and that there were no puncture marks on her body, as are to be seen in kidney surgeries.

This leads to further doubts on the Sanjay Gandhi Postgraduate Institute of Medical Sciences (SGPGI), which has certified both the surgery and transplant.