Forensic pathologist Dr. Raquel Fortun is set to conduct an autopsy on the unclaimed remains of eight persons deprived of liberty (PDLs) who died at the New Bilibid Prison (NBP) in Muntinlupa City.
“The DOJ (Department of Justice) has given a directive giving authority to Bureau of Corrections (BuCor) that the bodies be autopsied and most of them are unclaimed,” Corrections Technical Senior Superintendent Ma. Cecilia Villanueva, chief of the NBP hospital and acting director of the bureau’s Directorate for Health and Welfare Services (DHWS), said on Friday, Dec. 2.
Villanueva said the remains of the PDLs are currently being kept at the Eastern Funeral Services in Alabang, Muntinlupa City.
“Presently we have only 42 bodies at Eastern, eight of them will soon be autopsied,” she noted.
Villanueva said Dr. Fortun, chairperson of the University of the Philippines (UP) Manila Department of Pathology, is expected to start conducting the autopsies next week.
“We are just processing the papers and by next week we will be sending them to UP PGH (Philippine General Hospital),” she said.
She added that the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) will be “the one to decide which will be included in the autopsy.”
Earlier, Villanueva had said that the NBI had already autopsied the remains of 39 PDLs within 48 hours from their deaths.
She said the results of the NBP autopsies were sent to Fortun. The results stated that the 39 PDLs died of natural causes.
Meanwhile, Villanueva said one of the 70 unclaimed remains which were buried at the NBP cemetery on Friday, Dec. 2, belonged to a Japanese national.
She said the family of the Japanese national had been informed. “According to the Japanese Embassy, the family was no longer interested,” she added.
TAGS: #BuCor #Autopsy of PDLs’ remains at NBP