West Bengal: Body of IIT-Kharagpur student, Faizan Ahmed, exhumed on Calcutta High Court order for a second autopsy
Following the Calcutta High Court’s order, the body of Faizan Ahmed, a third-year student of Mechanical Engineering at IIT-Kharagpur, who was found dead in a hostel room of the premier institute, was exhumed from a cemetery in Assam on Tuesday. The purpose of the second autopsy is to uncover the “truth behind the death,” seven months after the incident took place.
On October 14, 2022, students at IIT-Kharagpur discovered the decomposing body of Faizan in a hostel room that was not assigned to him. While initial reports pointed to suicide as the cause of death, his family raised allegations of murder, asserting that he had been subjected to ragging on campus. The family expressed dissatisfaction with both the police investigation and the handling of the situation by the authorities at IIT-Kharagpur.
Two weeks later, Ahmed’s family approached the Calcutta HC, appealing to transfer the case to a special investigation team. Following a report by a court-appointed forensic expert that found two visible injury marks on the back of the victim’s head, which were not mentioned in the original postmortem report, Justice Rajasekhar Mantha of Calcutta HC stated that a second postmortem is “vital and necessary for arriving at the truth behind the death of Faizan Ahmed.” The court further noted that a bottle of sodium nitrate, typically used for meat preservation, was discovered at the crime scene. Additionally, it was observed that there was no odor emanating from the body for a period of three days. “The presence of this chemical Emplura (Sodium Nitrate) opens up serious questions as regards the time of death and whether it may have been used to preserve the body after the death of the victim,” read the court order.