Demand for body puzzles family
Businessman readied for burial when request for autopsy halts proceedings
QUESTIONS are being asked about the death of a Durban businessman — because his body had to be sent back to hospital for an autopsy only hours before his funeral.
On Saturday last week, when the body of transport company owner Arunkumar Girdhari, 59, was about to be taken from the mortuary to his home for the funeral, eThekwini Hospital & Heart Centre phoned the family and asked for the body.
Girdhari had died in the hospital on Friday night. The businessman had been admitted to hospital on Wednesday evening after he was discovered unconscious next to his truck in Shelly Beach, Margate, while making a delivery to a furniture store.
“His assistant was in the store. There was nobody with him in the truck and a passer-by saw him lying in a pool of blood,” said Girdhari’s wife, Karen.
An ambulance took him to a Margate clinic and then the Margate Hospital before he was transferred to the heart centre in Durban for specialist treatment.
Karen said neurosurgeon Dr Erastus Kiratu had told her that her husband had serious brain injuries.
“I asked him what hope we had for my husband and he said he would survive, but he would discuss it with the physician.”
During subsequent visits and phone calls to the hospital, the family was told that the businessman’s con-
We still believe that he is coming home from this hospital because we can’t believe this. He was fit as a fiddle, built like a wrestler
dition was stable.
But on Friday night nurses told Karen that Girdhari had died of a heart attack.
“He went in with a brain injury, so I was actually very confused,” said Karen.
The family was asked to remove the body within three hours because the hospital did not have mortuary facilities.
Koshik Maharaj, director of Newlands City Funerals, confirmed that Girdhari’s body was released to his company quickly because the 59-year-old had died of natural causes.
The businessman’s remains were taken first to the undertaker’s Phoenix mortuary and then the Phoenix mortuary for the final Hindu funeral rites and for the body to be prepared for the funeral the next day — which included dressing Girdhari in the suit he had once asked to be cremated in.
“We had everything set for the funeral and then we received a call from the hospital saying we could not continue,” said Maharaj.
The hospital said the body had to be returned because “it could not have been a heart attack because he [Girdhari] had a fall and he could have sustained injuries”.
Hospital general manager Niresh Bechan said the release of the body was being investigated and that the family would receive the results of the postmortem examination.
Police spokesman Colonel Jay Naicker said an inquest had been opened into Girdhari’s death.
The businessman was cremated on Sunday, but Karen said: “We still believe that he is coming home from this hospital because we can’t believe this. He was fit as a fiddle, built like a wrestler.”