KARACHI, July 4: A second post-mortem on Kafila Siddiqui, a Canadian national of Pakistani origin, has failed to take place despite lapse of nine days after the setting up of a medical board by the Sindh government on the request of Islamabad.

The Sindh health department had notified a medical board on June 25 with Dr Umar Memon, head of the forensic department of the Dow University of Health Sciences, as its chairman and head department of the forensic medicine of the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre Dr Ghulam Ali, police surgeon Dr Bashir Shaikh and two women medico-legal officers as its members. A pathologist who was notified as a member has already expressed his inability to be part of the board.

Sources in the health department said Dr Memon was sent on an official assignment to Punjab a few days back as part of the Pakistan Medical Dental Council (PMDC) inspection team. Answering a question about Dr Memon’s preoccupation with the PMDC and being the chairman of the medical board, Special Secretary to the Health Department Captain (retd) Abdul Majid said Dr Umar Memon returned to the city on Wednesday evening, adding that the delay was not being caused by the Health Department.

He said there was no delay on part of the health department. “We can perform the exhumation and post-mortem on a half-hour notice,” Dr Majid told Dawn.

He claimed that the delay in the exhumation was being caused by the non-availability of a magistrate whose presence was mandatory for exhumation and post-mortem examination.

Sources said the deceased’s sister in Karachi was perturbed over the delay in the legal formalities.

The commissioner of Islamabad had requested the Sindh government to carry out a second post-mortem on Kafila Siddiqui’s corpse after receiving an application from her husband Salman Qaiser.According to media reports, a US forensic expert has described Kafila’s autopsy report prepared by Pakistani doctors as “very superficial, appearing to have been completed in only a few minutes and in a very hasty and haphazard manner”. Ms Siddiqui’s heirs had doubted the autopsy report prepared by PIMS and sought the opinion of an American expert on it.