High Court asks why female attendants should not conduct postmortems on women

The petition says the practice of conducting post-mortems on dead women by male morgue or post-mortem assistants is "insensitive"

The High Court has issued a rule asking why female morgue assistants should not be appointed to conduct postmortems on dead women.

Following a primary hearing on a petition, the bench of Justice Fahmida Quader and Justice Md Ashif Hasan issued the rule on Sunday.

The secretary of the health ministry and the director general of the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS) have been asked to respond to the rule within two weeks.

Lawyer Md Monir Uddin filed the petition in the public interest and presented the arguments during the hearing.

He told bdnews24.com, "On the 13th of May, I submitted an application to the health ministry secretary and the DGHS director general, questioning why women who die in accidents, including road crashes, should not have their postmortems conducted by female morgue assistants.

"Receiving no feedback on that application, I filed the petition on the 30th of June."

Highlighting the necessity of female morgue assistants and citing instances of "corpse desecration" by male assistants, the lawyer said: "Certain incidents have occurred during postmortems. On 20 November 2020, an individual named Munna Bhagat committed necrophilia at Shaheed Suhrawardy Medical College.

“Moreover, on the 22nd of October, 2025, a similar incident occurred at Mymensingh Medical College involving a dead young woman and a morgue assistant named Abu Sayeed. Even in the US, a man named Kenneth Douglas desecrated 100 corpses."

When asked whether an adequate number of female morgue assistants would be available in the country, he said: "Female morgue assistants have already been appointed in West Bengal. Although the number of women in schools and colleges in Bangladesh was once low, women are now advancing in every sector.

“From nurses to doctors, women are being appointed everywhere. Therefore, if a circular is issued, female morgue assistants will certainly be found," he added.

The petition sought a rule asking why the respondents' "inaction" in issuing necessary orders for formulating guidelines on conducting post-mortems on dead women should not be declared beyond lawful authority and illegal.

It also sought directives to take steps to ensure that postmortems on dead women are conducted by female staff wherever possible, in order to protect the dignity and privacy of the dead in accordance with the law.