Hospicio horrors
The Hospicio is used to being in the news time and again, usually for the wrong reasons. The latest episode is one in which the relatives of 24-year-old Matrubia Shaikh – who was stabbed to death on Sunday evening in broad daylight near the Margao’s Old Bus stand by one Abhijit Patil in a case of an unfulfilled one-sided attraction – could not get custody of her body on Monday because the hospital simply had no senior medico-legal surgeon to conduct the mandatory post-mortem examination.
The problem was compounded after the medical officer drafted by the government to the Hospicio mortuary declined to perform the autopsy, on grounds that it was a murder case and the post-mortem must be performed by a senior doctor. The girl’s relatives said that they were called to the hospital at 9.30 am today to take possession of the girl’s body, but the post-mortem did not take place even by 11.30 am. To compound matters, there was no senior medico-legal surgeon on duty. That was when the Hospicio medical superintendent instructed the medical officer on duty – who declined to do it herself because she did not have the necessary seniority – to transport the girl’s body to the Goa Medical College and Hospital mortuary at Bambolim, where the post-mortem could be done. Already in shock over Matrubia’s murder, the relatives had to endure endless red tape and unnecessary delays to hold her funeral.
Understandably, the relatives were furious. They were anxious to take possession of the body to perform the final rites in the evening. Their haste was perfectly in order. In Muslim tradition, the deceased must be buried as soon as possible after death. The religion advocates against embalming or otherwise disturbing the body of the deceased. Post-mortems may be performed if necessary, but should be done with utmost respect for the dead person.
The Hospicio superintendent ought to have made adequate arrangements for carrying out the post-mortem on the girl’s body, since the doctor who was duty it is to do the autopsies at Hospicio was on leave. If that was not possible, he should have informed the relatives, so that they could arrange the funeral accordingly. Last but not least, what is the use of appointing a substitute doctor who is not qualified to carry out post mortems in medico-legal cases?
Matrubia’s brutal murder also brings up questions about what business organisations are doing to protect their women employees. As Bailancho Ekvott chief Auda Viegas has pointed out, the victim and the assailant both worked in a luxury hotel in Margao, and the girl was being constantly subject to the boy’s unwelcome attentions. This is tantamount to sexual harassment. All institutions – whether they are government or private entities – are required by a Supreme Court directive to set up a committee to look into cases of sexual harassment at the workplace. If the employers had set up such a committee and informed employees that any sexual harassment complaints could be directed to it, this murder might never have taken place.
It is time the Labour Department ensures that these ‘Vishaka Committees’ are set up in all organisations, so that Matrubia’s unfortunate death does not go in vain.
Bhopal bluff
The Congress is going into all sorts of contortions trying to explain Union Carbide Chairman Warren Anderson’s mysterious release after his arrest in Bhopal. The latest, of course, is Union Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee’s contention that the then Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Arjun Singh’s office was compelled to release Anderson to avoid a “law and order situation”.
Really?
What kind of “law and order situation” could have emerged when Anderson was in jail? Even if one concedes that it was “necessary” to fly him on the chief minister’s plane to New Delhi, who allowed Anderson to fly out of the country? Mr Mukherjee will only get his party into deeper trouble with such half-witted explanations.
