Question:medium
A 40-year-old RTA case is brought to casualty & declared brought dead by Dr. The Dr informs police official & sends body to mortuary. Autopsy in this case will be conducted on request of
A 40-year-old RTA case is brought to casualty & declared brought dead by Dr. The Dr informs police official & sends body to mortuary. Autopsy in this case will be conducted on request of
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A medico-legal autopsy in an RTA death is ordered by the police/magistrate, not by relatives or the doctor.
Updated On: Jun 22, 2026
- PP (Public Prosecutor)
- Defence lawyer
- Dr
- Investigating officer
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The Correct Option is D
Solution and Explanation
Authority-and-consent approach.
The key is to first decide whether this is a clinical autopsy or a medico-legal autopsy, because the two have completely different rules for who can order them.
An RTA fatality is an unnatural death, so it falls under the medico-legal category. Two facts in the stem confirm this: the doctor informed the police and sent the body to the mortuary rather than handing it to relatives.
For a medico-legal autopsy, consent of the relatives is NOT needed and, importantly, the doctor cannot self-initiate it. The examination is carried out only after the police or a magistrate sends a formal requisition/inquest report. In practice the Investigating Officer (police officer in charge of the inquest, typically a sub-inspector or higher) is the person who requests the autopsy and forwards the dead body with the relevant papers to the autopsy surgeon.
Eliminating the rest: the Public Prosecutor ($A$) and the Defence lawyer ($B$) are courtroom roles with no power over the conduct of a post-mortem; the Doctor ($C$) is merely the executor of the examination and must wait for the official requisition.
Correct option: D - Investigating officer.
The key is to first decide whether this is a clinical autopsy or a medico-legal autopsy, because the two have completely different rules for who can order them.
An RTA fatality is an unnatural death, so it falls under the medico-legal category. Two facts in the stem confirm this: the doctor informed the police and sent the body to the mortuary rather than handing it to relatives.
For a medico-legal autopsy, consent of the relatives is NOT needed and, importantly, the doctor cannot self-initiate it. The examination is carried out only after the police or a magistrate sends a formal requisition/inquest report. In practice the Investigating Officer (police officer in charge of the inquest, typically a sub-inspector or higher) is the person who requests the autopsy and forwards the dead body with the relevant papers to the autopsy surgeon.
Eliminating the rest: the Public Prosecutor ($A$) and the Defence lawyer ($B$) are courtroom roles with no power over the conduct of a post-mortem; the Doctor ($C$) is merely the executor of the examination and must wait for the official requisition.
Correct option: D - Investigating officer.
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