A diving physician with 15 years’ experience in the Maldives, who reviewed the hospital records of Sergeant First Class Mohamed Mahudhee at our request.
Mahudhee’s death certificate records cerebral arterial gas embolism, due to a rapid ascent, due to the diver being removed from depth. The CT findings behind it are typical of a severe embolism – but as the physician points out, they cannot show why it happened. The same findings can be caused by a lung injury during a panicked ascent by a living diver, or produced afterwards in a body brought rapidly to the surface from depth.
Two explanations. Entirely different deaths. The imaging alone cannot choose between them.
What could have settled it: a forensic post-mortem, which ADK Hospital itself recommended and could not perform – none was conducted, and Mahudhee was buried within hours. And the dive profile recorded on his dive computer, which would show whether a rapid ascent happened while he was alive. That computer is held by the MNDF. His phone, which holds the same data, is held by the authorities.
“What is with his diving computer?” the physician asked. “Why did they not make an autopsy of the body and the equipment?”
They are the same questions his parents put to the police in June. They are still unanswered.
Read the explainer: https://maldivesindependent.com/explainer/the-death-of-sgt-mahudhee-what-the-records-show-15d6
