The remains of IIT Kharagpur student Faizan Ahmed, exhumed from Amolapatty Kabarsthan in Dibrugarh in Assam on Tuesday, were flown to Calcutta on Wednesday and taken to the morgue of the Calcutta Medical College and Hospital for a second post-mortem.
After the remains reached the morgue around 2.30pm, six cops were deployed outside the morgue in a departure from the usual practice.
“Usually, we don’t deploy police outside the morgue. But this is a high-profile case, considering that the entire exercise is being carried out in compliance with an order issued by a division bench of Calcutta High Court headed by the Chief Justice. We are maintaining a high alert,” a senior hospital official told The Telegraph.
He said Biswajit Sukul, head of the department of forensic and state medicine at the medical college, will help forensic expert Ajay Kumar Gupta in conducting the second post-mortem.
The high court had engaged Gupta to review the findings of the first post-mortem, conducted at the Midnapore Medical College and Hospital, and also asked him to conduct the second autopsy.
The court also said the second post-mortem should be conducted in the presence of the doctors who performed the first and anybody the state may nominate.
Gupta told this newspaper on Wednesday evening: “I have plans to carry out the post-mortem on Saturday and submit a report to the court at the earliest.”
The high court ordered the second post-mortem after Gupta highlighted some “discrepancies” between what he saw in the video of the first post-mortem and what was mentioned in the report.
The high court’s April 25 order reads: “The… exercise (the second post-mortem) is vital and necessary for arriving at the truth behind the death of Faizan Ahmed.”
The third-year mechanical engineering student, who was from Dibrugarh, was found dead in a hostel room on the campus on October 14, 2022.
According to the IIT authorities, he had committed suicide. But Faizan’s parents moved the high court alleging he was murdered by senior students because he did not want to take part in an “assimilation programme”, which the family alleged was a “glorified version of collective ragging”.
Faizan’s mother Rehana Ahmed said that they reached the Calcutta airport around 12.20pm. She and husband Salim left the medical college around 4pm after completing the formalities.
“The second post-mortem will be conducted in the next few days.... I hope we will know the truth, and my son will get justice,” Rehana said.
Faizan was buried at Amolapatty Kabarsthan in Dibrugarh on October 16.
Wednesday started early for Faizan’s family members and Dibrugarh police. They left for the morgue where the body was kept after it was exhumed on Tuesday morning.
They left with the coffin around 6.30am and reached the airport around 7.
Salim, Rehana and an officer from Kharagpur police left with the coffin by an 11am Dibrugarh-Kolkata flight.