SATURDAY, APRIL 27, 2024
Sujay Gupta
We have a father of a girl, Siddhi Naik who could have been murdered (though the police have surprisingly ruled out the angle in the first instance and also most dismissed the death as suicidal) running around the beaches of North Goa, distraught, angry and dejected as if his last train to the station of hope had left.
On the other hand, the Goa police after waiting for eight days literally scrambled to get CCTV footage from wherever they could, all along the coastal belt, in an apparent afterthought that their initial findings could have gone completely wrong. The chase for the CCTV footage when it is very unlikely that any murder suspect would hang around to be detected was almost comical and was forced due to the refusal of the father to accept the police and the forensic finding that his daughter committed suicide. It also indicates the clear nervousness on the part of the Goa police, which as pressure builds to look at this as a murder case, from the highest levels of government, they do NOT have the one crucial body sample which would have opened further doors of investigation, the viscera.
THE Forensic Dept of GMC went by the police death report which did not even suspect homicide.
It has been confirmed at the highest levels of the Forensics Dept that the death report did not even indicate the possibility of this death being homicidal. The senior doctor also stated when conducting the post mortem, “they did not find any injuries, marks or other signs which warranted the preservation of the viscera.” A senior doctor in the Forensics Department also said the “autopsy findings matched the circumstances of death as mentioned in the police death report.”
At one level the Forensics team maybe justified in their actions. But this is a question of the death of a very young Goan girl in the prime of her life. Other important facts need to be considered.
The questions that arise are:
1) In a death under mysterious circumstances and especially since the body was found topless with just the lower undergarment on, wouldn’t it be prudent to preserve the viscera following the “theory of probability,” even if no external injuries.
2) Secondly, a senior Bombay-based medico-legal expert pointed out something very crucial. He said that while in cases of homicidal drowning signs of struggle or marks of violence is visible, if a person is taken unawares or rendered senseless and defenceless by alcohol and hypnotic drugs, and the head is submerged in water for five or 10 minutes, NO MARKS OF VIOLENCE WILL BE FOUND ON THE BODY. And it is only a proper examination of the viscera that concludes that. But the viscera of this victim has been reduced to ashes along with her body.
3) When the new post mortem rooms were built, there were provisions for inbuilt CCTV cameras to record each Port Mortem Procedure. Isn’t it fair to ask if this provision exists and if not, the reason why post mortem examinations are not video recorded?
If this was an open and shut case, why did Goa police write to the Forensics Department, to ask for the protocol for the preservation of the viscera for chemical analysis, dated 18-08-21?
Dr Andre Fernandes, Head Department of Forensic Medicine Goa Medical College, in a letter in a response dated 19/08/21 to the Goa police letter gave 7 conditions under which the viscera are preserved for chemical analysis. Of the 7 conditions mentioned by Dr Andre Fernandes, two of them point 1 and point 7, which need to be there to preserve the viscera for chemical analysis, need special mention.
Point 1: Case of homicide/suspected homicide or any suspicion of foul play as mentioned in the police death report
Point 7: When specifically requested by the Investigating Officer for purpose of his investigation
Both these points are under the hands of the Goa police and neither of the above conditions was in consideration by the Forensics Department because the Goa police certainly did not want to investigate this case for murder.
Therefore, it needs to be known why the Goa police, specifically the North Goa police, in the middle of the investigation, without quite mentioning any connection with the Siddhi Naik, ‘death by drowning case’, (as per the death report) wrote to the Forensics Department asking for the ‘protocol followed in drowning case’ to preserve the viscera for chemical analysis.
When contacted and asked if his office had sent a letter regarding the preservation of the viscera in the Siddhi Naik case, the SDPO (DySP) Edwin Colaco said “I empathically deny that I have written a single letter regarding the Siddhi Naik case to the GMC. I condemn any report that says that”. He also said that his higher-ups (read SP North Goa) are also dealing with the matter and he would not be in a position to comment on any correspondence at a different level.
However, it is ironic that the Goa police should even write to the Department of Forensic Medicine because when Mahananda Naik serial killing incidents came to light in April 2009, in May 2009 Superintendent of police (North Goa) issued guidelines to conduct post-mortem by a panel of doctors if dead bodies of females are found in mysterious circumstances and to keep samples for DNA if a female is unidentified. In this case, a two-member post mortem board should be formed.
This was specifically mentioned in a letter to the Chief Minister by Auda Viegas of the NGO Bailancho Ekvott on 18/08/21, (interestingly the same day when the Goa police letter to the GMC was sent asking for the protocol followed for preserving the viscera).
The Chief Minister’s office sent a reply to Viegas’ letter dated 20/08/21 stating “You have given workable and measurable points for the safety of all citizens”.
When the guidelines sent by the North Goa SP in May 2009 was mentioned to the Senior doctor in the Department of Forensics he remarked, “But that holds true for only unidentified bodies”. However, another veteran forensics expert said that this holds true for all mysterious bodies of females and only in the case of unidentified bodies, the DNA sample is kept.
Therefore, while the police have a lot to be accountable for in the light of recent information available, the call to NOT preserve the viscera for chemical analysis by the Forensics Department needs to be looked and relooked, again and again, to see if all the boxes were ticked before coming to a vital conclusion that the viscera need not be preserved.
From what has been found, that doesn’t appear to be the case.
Yes as a hapless father, economically weak, bodily fragile, and mentally a wreck, holds on to just one handle on which he can still stand still, the love for his daughter and the need to give her justice, our investigating agencies as well as medico-legal agencies need to do much better. The tragedy is that if Siddhi Naik died of murderous foul play, the police have left us with very little chance to find out. And even if she did die due to reasons other than her being killed, there will be no closure unless even that finding is conclusive.
And that is even grimmer than the finding her lifeless body, of a girl whose life was just beginning.
