Exhume body of 26-day-old infant and subject it to post-mortem, orders Madras High Court

The Madras High Court has directed the Cuddalore Superintendent of Police (SP) to exhume the body of a 26-day-old infant to ascertain its cause of death. The order was passed after the baby’s mother had suppressed before the court the very birth of the infant.

A Division Bench of Justices M.S. Ramesh and V. Lakshminarayanan directed the SP to register a First Information Report (FIR) for suspicious death, exhume the body and then send it for forensic pathological analysis at a government hospital.

After the post-mortem, the body should be buried in a dignified manner at a designated place of burial and the baby’s mother and father should be permitted to participate in the burial and perform any funeral rites, if they choose to do so, the Bench ordered.

The interim orders were passed in a habeas corpus petition filed by a woman from Panruti Taluk in Cuddalore district seeking custody of her one-year-old son. She had filed the case against her husband and his family members and sought a direction to the police to producer her son in court.

During the course of hearing, Additional Public Prosecutor (APP) E. Raj Thilak told the court the petitioner had given birth to a second child too but it had died. However, the petitioner categorically denied the APP’s statement and claimed to have not given birth to any second child.

After obtaining a short adjournment from the court, the APP submitted a letter from a Village Administrative Officer who confirmed she had indeed given birth to a second child at the Government hospital in Panruti on June 7, 2025 but that baby had fallen ill on July 4, 2025.

The petitioner had taken the sick baby to the same hospital at 3 am on July 4, 2025 but when the hospital declared the baby to have been brought dead, the woman “escaped” from the hospital along with the body and buried it along the banks of Kedipalam River at 5 am on the same day, the APP said.

He also told the court the body was taken away from the hospital and buried even before the conduct of post-mortem. Mr. Thilak also told the court there was a possibility of the infant having died due to milk aspiration but added it would have to be confirmed only through a post-mortem.

Finding force in his submissions and suspecting the conduct of the petitioner, the judges directed the police to exhume the body the infant and subject it to autopsy. They called for the post-mortem report by August 28, 2025 to pass further orders in the case.