Another big claim has been made by The Caravan in judge BH Loya’s suspicious death. Its latest report says that the post-mortem examination of Loya was manipulated under the supervision of a doctor related to Maharashtra Minister and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Sudhir Mungantiwar.
According to The Caravan, the official records say that the postmortem was conducted by Dr NK Tumram, but was, in fact, led by Dr Makarand Vyawahare. He was then a professor in the department at Government Medical College (GMC), Nagpur and is the brother-in-law of BJP minister Munganitwar. He wields power in the professional circle primarily because of his political connections, report states. It also claims that Vyawahare “showed extraordinary interest in Loya’s corpse”.
Reporter Nikita Saxena during her two-month long investigation spoke to employees of GMC to ascertain what happened on December 1, 2014 – when Judge Loya died and postmortem of his corpse was conducted. According to an employee termed as “fifth employee”, there was an injury on Loya’s head (as claimed by judge Loya’s family in the first report published by the magazine). He has been quoted as saying that the injury was “on the back, towards the right side.” He further added the injury was of “the kind that is there when a stone hits and the skin tears”, and was not particularly large. As per the fifth employee, it was deep enough for blood to have gushed out of it, “cloth that was covering him [Loya] was soaked with blood towards the head … it was completely red” and that the hair around that portion of the head “was also matted”.
However, Vyawahare didn’t let Tumram note this injury in the examination report saying, “Write only as much as I am telling you,” claimed the fifth employee. This employee is also quoted saying that Vyawahare also said, “Write the findings of the post-mortem report in front of me.”
Judge Loya was hearing Sohrabuddin fake encounter case, in which BJP chief Amit Shah, too, was an accused. He died on December 1, 2014, and Shah was acquitted in the same month.
Loya’s examination report doesn’t mention the head injury — under point 19, that is labelled as “Head”, the entries in sub-points read, “Injuries under the scalp, their nature”, the report notes, “No injuries”.
The report goes on to quote other employees who have claimed that Dr Vyawahare was capable of manipulating the report. Notably, in November 2015, Vyawahare was accused of falsifying post-mortem reports. Following the protest by students, the GMC formed a committee, to look into these charges, which observed that allegations of manipulation of postmortems were “true”.
(Read The Caravan’s report here.)