While operations are on to fish out the bodies of Navy personnel feared dead in the INS Sindhurakshak disaster on August 14, a battery of tests are being conducted on the bodies of the deceased at naval hospital, INHS Asvini, and the state-run JJ Hospital.
The bodies were sent to INHS Asvini in Navy Nagar, from where they were later transferred to JJ Hospital in Byculla. Till Sunday evening, JJ hospital in Byculla had conducted post-mortems on six bodies.
There is hope that the bodies will be identified through their dental records, which are available with the Navy.
“Doctors at INHS Asvini have sent the bodies for post-mortem after taking records of dental patterns from the bodies. The patterns will be matched with the archived dental records to expedite identification of bodies,” said a doctor at the forensic medicine department from JJ Hospital.
The doctors at forensic medicine department in JJ Hospital are also performing diatom tests on the bodies, which will help ascertain if a deceased died before drowning or after.
“Whenever there are signs of drowning, unicellular algae from the localised water — in this case, the sea — enter the body. We are checking the extent of diatom spread in the bodies of the personnel and will match it with samples of sea water to ascertain if death occurred after drowning,” said another doctor from the department of forensic medicine at JJ Hospital.
The doctor added that they are checking for the presence of diatoms in the liver, spleen, heart and lungs of the deceased.
“In cases where death occurs due to drowning, diatoms are found in peripheral organs like the spleen and liver. This is because the heart, which is still beating as the person drowns, pumps the diatom-laden water inhaled through the lungs to the liver and spleen,” said the doctor.
However, in cases where bodies are thrown into the water after drowning, blood circulation has stopped before water enters the lungs and the presence of diatoms will be restricted to the lungs and heart, explained the doctor.
The bodies that have reached JJ Hospital for autopsies will be lodged in the hospital’s cabinet cold storage capacity, maintained at the temperature of 2-4°C, as the morgue in naval hospital INHS Asvini does not have the wherewithal to maintain such low temperatures, said a source.
Bone and tooth samples from the bodies have been sent for DNA analysis at state-run forensic laboratory in Kalina.
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