Shillong, Apr 19: The Meghalaya government has assured to examine a proposal for extending facility to conduct postmortem examination at community health centres (CHCs) and public health centres (PHCs) in the state.

Replying in the Assembly here on Thursday, Home Minister James K Sangma said, “We will examine the proposal along with the health department for exploring the possibility of having more medical officers and staff for conducting post mortem at the CHC and PHC level.”

Earlier while raising this issue, Congress legislator from Umroi George B Lyngdoh urged the government to consider the proposal as family and relatives of deceased persons apart from grieving have to go a lot of stress due to absence of postmortem facilities especially in rural areas and the dead body has to be brought only to the state capital or district headquarters for postmortem.

To a query raised by another Congress MLA from East Shillong Ampareen Lyngdoh, Sangma said that exemption for post mortem based on the merit of the case.

He however said that the code of criminal conduct has to be strictly followed keeping in mind the investigation that have to be looked into as there are cases where foul play might be involved.

On the delay of delivering post mortem reports to the relatives of the deceased persons, the minister said that there were cases that required various tests to be conducted including collection of DNA samples and this is one of the reasons that it took time to deliver the post mortem reports.

Earlier many MLAs demanded that the government should take steps to ensure that the family members of any deceased person should not suffer especially it should not take time in getting the body exempted from postmortem.