India probes discovery of bodies found in morgue
A forensic team has submitted a report on the gruesome discovery of dozens of bones and decayed body parts found in a police morgue in northern India, police said yesterday. Police in India’s northern Uttar Pradesh state said the human remains, discovered Friday, had apparently been left there after autopsies and had been stored in a post-mortem room that had been locked since 2008. “Sacks of bones and jars of (decaying) organs were found on Friday. The room had not been used in over six years but some workers spotted them through an open window,” senior police official GN Soni said by phone from Unnao district. “The expert committee has already submitted its report to the district magistrate,” Soni added.
Soni said he did not know where the bodies came from or why they were never cremated, but police have reportedly admitted a lapse in normal procedures for the disposal of bodies after post-mortems. Authorities will now conduct DNA tests and investigate why “100 bones and skulls”some which date back to the early 1980s”were left to rot in the room”, another district police official, who did not wished to be named, said.
Dozens of other skeletons and decayed body parts have similarly been discovered in other parts of Uttar Pradesh, The Times of India and Mail Today newspapers reported yesterday. The latest incidents come just weeks after some 100 bodies were found floating in India’s River Ganges near a cremation area in Unnao. Police say the bodies were probably given river burials by families too poor to afford enough wood and other materials for a proper cremation. Millions of India’s Hindus practice open-air cremation, with the ashes of loves ones scattered in the revered Ganges. While Hindus cremate their loved ones, the country’s Muslim and Christian minorities usually choose burial as they believe there will be a physical resurrection on the Day of Judgment.
In other news, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi will visit China in May, the foreign minister said yesterday during her own three-day visit to Beijing. “Mr Modi is going to come in May. I will give them dates today. This is a preparatory visit,” Sushma Swaraj told Indian reporters in Beijing, according to the Press Trust of India (PTI) news agency.
Swaraj is holding three-way talks with her Chinese and Russian counterparts during the trip, her first official visit since she took office last year. US president Barack Obama last week paid a high-profile visit to India aimed at bolstering ties between the two countries, which share an interest in curbing China’s growing regional influence. Although neither side mentioned China by name during Obama’s three-day visit, the US president welcomed what he called a “greater role for India in the AsiaPacific” and said freedom of navigation in the region must be upheld. Beijing claims sovereignty over most of the South China Sea. Modi is widely seen as taking a more assertive line on China than the previous government. But experts say he will be careful not to alienate China, whose investment he desperately needs as he tries to boost India’s economy. PTI said Chinese President Xi Jinping was expected to take Modi to his home province of Shaanxi to repay the hospitality he received in the Indian premier’s home state last September. —Agencies