The Forensic Department of Khyber Medical College University in Peshawar, Pakistan has come out with a callous proposal that seeks to charge rape victims PKR 25,000 for medical examination and PKR 5,000 for an autopsy for the local residents of Peshawar, reports Express Tribune.
According to the reports, the Management Committee of Khyber Medical College University, in a recently held meeting, decided to enforce new rules. Under the new rules, the charges for keeping corpses in the cold storage has been raised to PKR 1,500 per 24 hours. For DNA testing, PKR 18,000 has been fixed. The decision to make 17 new charges was taken to meet the operational expenditures of the Forensic Department.
“For the district Peshawar autopsy cases, the department will charge PKR 5,000 per case, while for the cases referred from other districts, the charges will be PKR 25,000 per post-mortem,” said an official of the department. He added that for kinship and paternity test PKR 20,000 fee has been proposed.
Police may force rape victims’ to pay for their medical examination
Further, one has to pay PKR 3,000 for drug abuse analysis. Urine tests and alcohol analysis will cost PKR 2,000, and the test for poison detection to cost PKR 4,000.
The local police send the unclaimed dead bodies to the Khyber Medical College University, where they are stored for months until their identification and retrieval by the family.
The activists believe that the new rules will affect the rape victims. In Pakistan, the Police Department already has a limited investigation budget, and the introduction of such high charges may lead to police forcing the victims’ families to pay for not only autopsy but also DNA tests and medical examination of rape victims.
“When you go to a police station they often ask you to pay for the diesel for police vehicles. Now they will ask the general public to pay the charges of autopsy and even medical examination of rape victims. So the decision is not a welcome one,” said a rights activist Tamur Kamal while speaking to The Express Tribune.
