Even as autopsy of Sarabjit Singh’s body was conducted at Patti hospital in Amritsar to ascertain the cause of death and to cross-check the claims of Pakistan over the same and the time of death, it shockingly turned out that Pakistan had sent the dead body of Sarabjit without the vital organs like heart, kidneys and stomach.
A panel of five doctors, consisting of heads of the departments of Forensic, Anaesthesia, Orthopaedics, Surgery and Pathology from Amritsar Medical College, conducted the post-mortem of Sarabjit’s body on Thursday night.
Well placed sources told The Indian Express that the panel found vital organs like heart, kidneys and stomach missing from the body of Sarabjit.
This will make the autopsy exercise in India grossly inconclusive, said doctors, raising further questions marks over the intentions and conduct of Pakistan in the case of Sarabjit, who was brutally assaulted inside the Kot Lakhpat Jail.
The missing of these vital organs in Sarabjit’s body is set to create another controversy with a medical expert telling The Indian Express that the examination of said vital organs was very crucial in cases of poisoning.
The development is set to ignite another debate whether Sarabjit was administered something in food or otherwise to make him vulnerable for the deadly assault on him in the Kot Lakhpat Jail.
“Yes, we were not anticipating that Pakistan would send the body without these vital organs,” Head of the Forensic department Dr Gurmanjit Singh, who was among the panel members who conducted autopsy, told The Indian Express.
He, however, added that as a standard medical procedure Pakistan could keep the vital organs for further testing. “We would have to rely on their reports on these organs,” Dr Gurmanjit said.
Asked how reliable those test reports could be when there was so much trust deficit between the two countries, he said if India wants it can take up the matter with Pakistan to bring the vital organs back for medical examination.
“There is still time to conduct tests on these organs,” Dr Gurmanjit said.
Another doctor in the panel too echoed similar views adding that India can demand the return of Sarabjit’s vital organs to conduct tests here. “Otherwise, the autopsy by us here is only complementary in nature to the report of autopsy by Pakistan on those vital organs,” the doctor said.
“I have also been told that heart, kidneys and stomach of Sarabjit is missing. There are also grievous injuries on different parts of his body, including the spinal chord,” Punjab cabinet minister Bikram Singh Majithia told The Indian Express.
“I do not know whether Pakistan informed Ministry of External Affairs or Indian High Commission in Pakistan that Sarabjit’s body is being sent without vital organs, but I had been with Minister of State for External Affairs Perneet Kaur today and I think she was not informed about the same,” Majithia said.