Investigators say they can trace almost every stalled medical negligence case in Kashmir back to one moment: a family saying no to autopsy.
The corridor outside the mortuary at Srinagar’s forensic laboratory smells of antiseptic and cold stone. Families come with grief and suspicion, then stop at the morgue entrance, unwilling to let their loved one go.
A few steps away, investigators wait with forms, questions and procedures that can take a case from suspicion to evidence. When the examination cannot happen, that chain breaks before it begins.
Officials say versions of this scene play out repeatedly in Kashmir.
A family suspects something went wrong at a hospital, a case is registered, and then, at the point where forensic evidence could settle the question, the process stalls.
The result is often the same: suspicion remains, but the evidence needed for a finding never enters the case.
Gulzar Ahmad’s family knows that silence better than most.
The Dalgate man died during treatment two years ago at Srinagar’s Paras Hospital, the household’s only earner gone within days of admission. His relatives suspected something had gone wrong and pushed for an inquiry. Officials opened one.
Almost 800 days later, the file remains open; so does the question of who bears responsibility.
Compensation never came, and the family now worries about putting food on the table while waiting for a case that has dragged on endlessly.
Health officials point to Gulzar’s case as part of a wider pattern: when families decline a post-mortem, investigators are left with an incomplete record and little ground to establish what really happened.
Dr Tahir Sajad, Srinagar’s Chief Medical Officer, has seen this pattern play out again and again, leaving families with grief and questions that remain unanswered.
Families approach officials convinced that a hospital failed someone they loved, he said. Officials open an inquiry, but the investigation can stall when the family declines the post-mortem.
“The cause of death gets confirmed only if the family allows us to conduct the autopsy,” Sajad said, describing how quickly a promising inquiry can lose its footing.
When families decline, his team pieces together a secondhand account built from hospital charts, security footage where it exists, treatment timelines and statements from doctors defending their own decisions.
Hospitals often dispute those findings, families reject them just as often, and the case drifts somewhere between the two, unresolved.
Dr Tahir ul Gani, an assistant scientific officer at the Forensic Science Laboratory in Srinagar, gives a blunter assessment from the forensic side.
An autopsy remains the one piece of evidence capable of standing apart from a hospital’s own version of events, he said, and building a negligence case without one means arguing blind.
“No investigation can prove medical negligence without an autopsy report,” Gani said, urging families who suspect wrongdoing to set aside their hesitation and allow the examination.
His plea exposes a system where a grieving family’s decision can determine how far an investigation goes.
Officials trace the resistance to belief rather than distrust of medicine itself.
Islamic tradition holds that a body needs gentle treatment after death, free from cutting or prolonged handling, a principle many families in Kashmir hold close during the rawest days of loss.
Islamic scholars themselves remain divided on how far that principle should extend.
Some permit autopsy when a clear legal or public purpose exists, such as confirming a cause of death or supporting a criminal case. Others counsel restraint regardless of circumstance, treating a body’s rest as close to sacred.
Families facing this religious dilemma often make the decision within hours of a death, well before they can see how it may affect the investigation and its chances of finding an answer.
Case files across the valley bear the markers of that decision.
A 35-year-old woman from Baramulla died on July 1, 2026, during a procedure at Harkaar IVF and Maternity Centre in Hyderpora. Police sealed the clinic within days and began investigating the death.
Months later, Abdul Rashid, the munshi at Saddar Police Station handling the case, said the investigation was still waiting for the one report that could tie everything together.
“We have received no reports of the autopsy yet,” he said.
A separate inquiry into a death at Medlyn Hospital in Natipora shows how quickly a case can curdle once that central piece goes missing.
An insider in the health department described contradictions officials sense but struggle to prove: security cameras that existed but produced no footage, and test results that left one hospital around four in the afternoon but reached another closer to eight that evening, four hours unaccounted for.
“There are certain suspicious things that suggest something went wrong,” the insider said, “but we cannot prove it.”
Officials responsible for monitoring hospital conduct face a recurring problem: the difference between legal requirements and religious beliefs remains difficult to bridge.
Compensation claims stall alongside the inquiries, while doctors accused of negligence continue practising while files remain open.
Families like Gulzar’s can find themselves paying a heavy price for a decision made in the first hours after a death.
The burial brings closure for the family, while the investigation can remain open, its central questions still waiting for evidence.
Dr Sajad put the dilemma plainly.
“Families sensing wrongdoing hold the outcome of the investigation in their own hands, whether they realise it or not,” he concluded.
