4 min readVadodaraMay 1, 2026 02:14 AM IST
A DAY after doctors and staff of the postmortem department of Sir Sayajirao General Hospital were allegedly assaulted by relatives of a deceased woman after finding the body kept in the cold room in a “severely decomposed” state, the Vadodara police on Thursday arrested all the 12 accused persons booked in the case.
Police said that four women relatives as well as the two sons of the deceased are among those arrested.
They are facing charges of assaulting government officials on duty as well as under the Gujarat Medicare Service Persons and Medicare Service Institutions (Prevention of Violence and Damage or Loss to Property) Act, 2012.
On the basis of a complaint registered by SSG Medico-Legal Officer Dr Vijaysinh Rathod, who was among the doctors allegedly assaulted by the family, Raopura police booked 12 persons in the case, including two sons of the deceased (Ranjan Vyas), as well as four women.
The accused persons include Vyas’s son Hiten and his wife Amita as well as the NRI son Amrish and his wife Antima, who were travelling from the US to attend their mother’s funeral, requiring the family to preserve the body at SSG’s morgue following Vyas’s demise on April 27. The other accused include Vyas’ daughter Tejaswi and grandson Het, among other relatives.
Police told The Indian Express all the arrested persons were produced in court on Thursday evening, with the police seeking remand of four men. The court remanded three of the accused in police custody for a day.
Raopura Police Inspector DJ Patel told The Indian Express earlier on Thursday, “We arrested three men on Wednesday night after the SSG officials lodged the FIR. The others, including four women, were arrested on Thursday. We will not seek remand for the women accused and it is up to the court to send them to judicial custody or grant them bail as per the provisions of the Gujarat Medicare Service Persons and Medicare Service Institutions (Prevention of Violence and Damage or Loss to Property) Act, 2012.”
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Patel added that the four other accused booked in the FIR had been “rounded up” and the process for their formal arrest was underway.
The police action comes in wake of the strike called by resident doctors on Thursday withdrawing non-emergency services and demanding immediate increased security and accountability, disrupting routine patient care at one of Central Gujarat’s busiest civil hospitals.
The FIR lodged at Raopura police station states that along with Rathod, a woman doctor posted at the post-mortem department, who hails from Bihar, was allegedly dragged from the morgue to the office of the MLO by the group, while abusing and threatening her. Another staff member and a senior resident doctor were also allegedly assaulted and Rathod’s shirt was “torn” by the group.
The incident took place around 8:30 am on Wednesday when the family of Vyas arrived to claim her body from the SSG morgue, where it had been kept following her demise on Monday. The family said that they had taken the decision to preserve the body at SSG’s cold room as Vyas’s son Amrish and his family were to arrive from the US on Wednesday morning. When relatives arrived at SSG to take back the body, they were shocked to see the body in a “highly decomposed state”.
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Alleging that the hospital staff did not “placate or extend apology” but instead “replied in a rude and dismissive manner” on being questioned about the condition of the body of their relative, the angry relatives allegedly got into a physical brawl with the staff and doctor on duty. Relatives of the deceased had also raised questions on why the body had been moved from the original chamber it had been placed on Monday, without informing the family.
Medical Superintendent of SSG Hospital Dr Ranjan Aiyer said in a statement that a “technical fault” could have led to the “unfortunate” decomposition of the body and condemned the attack on doctors.
