Cover-up seen in medico’s death

In what could prove to be evidence of a cover-up in the Vyapam scam investigation, the report of the autopsy conducted on a 19-year-old medical student in 2012, which said she was strangled, was overturned two months later by a “forensic” report which indicated that she committed suicide. The body of Namrata Damor was found on a railway track in Ujjain in January 2012. The autopsy report filed the same month said she died from “violent asphyxia as a result of smothering” and that the findings suggested “homicidal” death. The police initially filed a case of murder, but while filing a closure report in 2014, termed it a suicide. That view appears to have been influenced by a forensic report, filed two months after the autopsy, by B.S. Badkur, then head of the State-run Medico-Legal Institute. In an interview to a TV channel, Dr. Badkur admitted that he had written the report without examining the body but simply by looking at pictures of the body and “other documents”. On the basis of this evidence, his report concluded that Namrata’s injuries were more consistent with a fall on the train track rather than smothering or asphyxiation.   PTI