Inquest is defined as the preliminary inquiry into the cause of sudden, suspicious and unnatural death, which is apparently not due to natural causes
Types of inquest
There are basically four types of inquest
in the world and they are:
- Police inquest
- Magistrate inquest
- Coroner’s inquest
- Medical examiner system of inquest.
In India, there are basically two types of inquest
- police inquest
- magistrate inquest
Section 174 CrPC dealing with police inquest
and section 176 CrPC dealing with magistrate inquest.
Police inquest
- In India most common type inquest is police inquest
PROCEDURE
It is inquest conducted by the officer in-charge of a police station, not below the rank of sub-inspector (called the investigation officer of that particular case),on receipt of information of a death, informs the executive magistrate and proceeds to the place where the dead body is found.
It is Conducted with the presence of two reliable witnesses, who should be respectable persons of the society (panchas). He comes to
a conclusion of the apparent cause of death,as judged by him and prepares a report called the inquest report (panchnama).
If death is purely by a disease (natural death), he can hand over the body to relatives.If it is unnatural or if he suspects some foul play or the cause of death is not known, he can sends the body to the nearest authorized autopsy center for postmortem examination, along with a copy of the inquest report.
Magistrate inquest
It is the inquest conducted by the executive magistrate appointed by the state government.The Executive magistrates are Tahsildar, District Revenue Officer (DRO),Revenue Divisional Officer (RDO), PA to collector or the district collector.
The executive magistrate conducts inquest in the following situations:
- Exhumation
- Death in police custody
- Death during police interrogation
- Death due to police firing
- Death in a psychiatric hospital/mental
- Dowry deaths
- In any case of death, the magistrate may/can conduct an inquest instead of or in addition to the police inquest (Section176 CrPC).
Coroner’s inquest
This type of inquest is done in United Kingdom and some states of the USA.This type of inquest was practiced in many parts of India during the British rule it is no more in practice in India and was lastly withdrawn from Bombay in the year1999
Coroner is a person qualified either in medicine or law or both, appointed by the Govt.
He conducts the inquest in
- all unnatural and suspicious deaths.
- He is empowered to summon any person for
enquiry. - Coroner’s court is a court of enquiry, but he
is not empowered to conduct a trial