Refused hearse, Bihar kin carries body in plastic bag

KATIHAR(BIHAR): Insensitive to their repeated pleas for an ambulance, authorities at Sadar hospital here forced three persons to carry their dead relative in a plastic bag.

The three persons had earlier brought the badly decomposed body of Sintu Kumar to the hospital for post mortem, but the officials refused to conduct the autopsy and instead, asked them to go to Bhagalpur, about 86km from Katihar.

The repeated request of the family members to provide an ambulance also fell on deaf ears.

Helpless, the family members were forced to carry Kumar’s body in a plastic bag.

“We were helpless after we were told to take the body to Bhagalpur for postmortem,” they said.

Katihar civil surgeon SC Jha said the body was brought to the hospital on Sunday. “As it was badly decomposed, we referred it to Bhagalpur for post-mortem,” he said, adding that the hospital did not have hearse facility.

“It was the duty of the police to send the body to Bhagalpur,” Jha said.

Kumar drowned in river Ganga at Kursela almost two weeks ago and his body was fished out on September 25.

Earlier this month, two watchmen and one sub-inspector (SI) of police were suspended after television images showed them dragging the decomposed body of an unidentified youth by rope in Vaishali district.

The Desari police had fished out the body of the unidentified youth from the Ganga. With the help of a rope, the body was dragged through a muddy stretch of land to a dry spot.

The video went viral when a local youth filmed the incident and shared it with some Hajipur-based contributors of TV news channels.