Maldives Police Service (MPS) has begun implementing the new guidelines allowing it to approve post-mortem examinations in cases of unknown cause of death.
The new guidelines were formulated under the Criminal Procedure Act to determine the procedure for officers working on criminal cases in which the cause of death is undetermined. The guidelines allow officers to approve post-mortem examinations in such cases. As such, post-mortems are to be conducted at facilities approved by the Government of the Maldives and the government of the country in which the facility is established. The new guidelines also set conditions in which the MPS can approve post-mortems to determine a cause of death. The conditions include cases of death related to accidents as well as suspected suicide and murder. The police service is also allowed to approve post-mortems for cases in which the suspected cause of death was neglect, or for causes in which the cause of death was natural causes or unknown.
Furthermore, the guidelines also detail the procedure to follow when transferring bodies for post-mortems and taking samples to determine the identity of the body and tagging it with an identification number before the transfer and keeping a record of the information. The senior-most police officer in charge of approving post-mortems can approve a post-mortem examination on bodies that could not be identified.
Additionally, MPS is required to request the post-mortem facility to return the body to the family for burial without delay after the examination is conducted. If the body is that of a foreign national, the police service is required to inform the relevant consular mission or foreign ministry.