Cops scan CCTV for 150 hrs to trace body

It took watching around 150 hours of CCTV footage, wearing of PPE kits and spending time in the Covid-19 mortuary of Gandhi Hospital before the Mangalhat police cracked the case of the missing Narendar Singh, whose body was found in the hospital’s non-Covid mortuary after 14 days of legwork on Saturday.

Singh’s mother Nirmala Bai had complained to the Mangalhat police on June 6 saying her son was missing after going to Gandhi Hospital on May 30.

While visiting a mortuary for investigations is routine for the police, for investigating officer G. Shivanandam, Mangalhat sub-inspector, doing so in this case proved to be a chilling experience.

“Since the registration of the case, we had been visiting Gandhi Hospital every day for any lead. Each time I went there, I felt I was risking my life and those of my family and colleagues. There was fear of the Coronavirus but for a police officer, duty comes first. I somehow steeled myself during the visits to do my work,” he told Deccan Chronicle.

The one trip that included entering the Covid-19 victims’ mortuary also meant that he, along with a colleague of his, had to wear a PPE kit to stay safe.

“Since the day of Narendar Singh’s last communication with his family, we collected CCTV footage from Gandhi Hospital till the day of registration of the case on

June 6. We watched about 150 hours of the CCTV footage and determined that he never left the hospital. That is when we began checking hospital records for the bodies of admitted patients and unidentified persons in the morgue,” he said.

“It was only after physical verification of bodies at the mortuaries at Osmania general hospital and Gandhi hospital did we finally crack the case,” G. Ranaveer Reddy, Mangalghat inspector, said.