Kin identify bodies with burnt cloth, belts
NEWDELHI: With burn injuries ranging from 30% to more than 70%, one of the tasks before the doctors working in Baba Saheb Ambedkar (BSA) hospital’s forensics department on Sunday was to identify the dead. On Sunday, doctors at hospital conducted post-mortems of 12 of the 17 people, who died in a fire at a factory in Bawana the day before.
“One of the bodies for which we did a post-mortem today had been completely charred. The muscles had been exposed. However, the family identified the body immediately and gave permission for the post-mortem,” said Dr Kuldeep Kr Panchal, one of the four doctors who was doing the post-mortems.
The doctors had to call the family back to check how they had identified the dead. “He was wearing a yellowish-pant, a por- tion of which had not burnt and the buckle of his cloth-belt, too, was intact. This helped the family identify him,” said Dr Panchal.
Sukhda Rawat, 42, was another victim who had been severely burnt.
“When I reached the hospital, I was taken to the mortuary to identify the body. But what I saw was horrifying. There was a charred body in front of us with no way of telling whether it was my sister or not,” said Harshit Tiwari, who was a brother-like figure to Sukhda. He had rushed to the hospital on Sunday with her husband and a neighbour.
Her husband was able to identify her only because of a piece of blue sari that hadn’t burnt. Of the six bodies that are yet to be identified, two are charred beyond recognition. For all the bodies where identification was ambiguous, the doctors have saved samples of blood to run DNA tests later.
Some families are still looking for their lost ones
There were some families in the hospital premises who claimed that their beloved ones had been inside the factory at the time of the fire outbreak but couldn’t be found later. Some of these families went inside the mortuary but couldn’t identify any of the bodies.
One such family member was Bhim Pandit (32). He made several rounds of two hospitals on Sunday morning, hoping to find his brother-in-law Pintu Kumar (18). Kumar had been working and living in the factory since a month. After the fire outbreak on Saturday night, his family from Jharkhand called Pandit, who lives in Gurgaon. Pandit rushed to the factory, only to come across firefighters, police and media. He couldn’t find Kumar in the crowd. Somebody told him that the injured have been taken to Maharishi Valmiki hospital. Pandit went to the hospital but couldn’t find his brother-in-law.
Anticipating that he is dead, Pandit arrived at Baba Saheb Ambedkar Hospital to check the charred bodies. He looked closely at the burnt faces, to see for some sign of Kumar, but he returned from the mortuary in the afternoon, clueless and helpless.
“My brother-in-law is missing since the fire outbreak. He wasn’t among the injured ones, nor his name featured in the list of the dead. I went through the charred bodies twice. But Kumar wasn’t among them,” said Pandit.