Bhubaneswar, Jan. 6: The Orissa government has waded into fresh controversy by suspending the three doctors who, while doing autopsies on tribals killed in the Jajpur police firing, had cut off the corpses’ hands.

The doctors claimed they were only following police orders ? something the police had themselves admitted before backtracking ? and were being made scapegoats. A body of state doctors has threatened an agitation.

Six bodies had been taken away for post-mortem after police firing killed 12 tribals during a protest against construction on land bought by the Tatas for a steel plant.

When the bodies were returned, five had their hands missing from the wrist. As the tribals, now further enraged, demanded an explanation, the police said this was the only way to get fingerprints and identify the mutilated bodies.

The police claimed this was standard procedure: if bodies become too stiff and dry for fingerprints to be taken, the hands are cut off and dipped in saline so that they regain their shape.

But tempers were at boiling point in Jajpur, where Jharkhand Mukti Morcha chief Shibu Soren addressed a meeting yesterday, and the Opposition was raining condemnation on the government.

Late last night, chief minister Naveen Patnaik ordered the suspension of Dr Santanu Kumar Sahu, Dr Vivekananda Swain and Dr Arun Kumar Nathsharma of the Jajpur district hospital, describing their act as “very brutal”.

The police, too, did an about-turn, shifting the entire blame on the doctors. But the trio said they were following orders.

“The wrists were cut off in the presence of the chief district medical officer (CDMO), the additional district medical officer and the executive magistrate,” Nathsharma told reporters.

The CDMO, Brundaban Biswal, said he had indeed ordered the wrists cut off, but only after receiving a written requisition from Jajpur town police station.

Former Orissa police chief A.B. Tripathy, now associated with the National Human Rights Commission, said neither the state police manual nor the Indian Penal Code provides for hands being cut off for identification. “The top skin of the palm could have been peeled off,” he said.

The tribals continued to squat on the Duburi-Chandikhol road for the fifth day today, demanding compensation of Rs 20 lakh for each of the dead and Rs 10 lakh for every injured.

With the entire Opposition supporting tomorrow’s 12-hour Orissa bandh, called by a tribal body, the police have stationed an additional 154 platoons of armed personnel across the state.