The Delhi High Court on Tuesday sought response from the city government and the police on a petition seeking framing of guidelines on disposing of abandoned or unidentified bodies.
A Bench of Justice S. Ravindra Bhat and Justice Prateek Jalan also sought response from the government on the petition seeking for carrying out complete videography and photography of the last rites of the abandoned bodies in the presence of senior police officers.
The High Court has posted the case for further hearing on April 24.
Publicise request
The petition, filed in public interest, also sought to publicise the request for identification of the abandoned bodies, lying unattended in mysterious circumstances, through all modes of communication including all major newspapers and news channels of the State.
It further sought direction to preserve at least the ashes and physical identity including the clothes and valuable belongings of the bodies for a reasonable period of time for handing over the same to families of the deceased.
Father’s petition
The court was hearing a plea filed by Ramanuj Pursotam, whose son had gone missing on December 4, 2017, and later his body was recovered on December 8 the same year by the police, which disposed the body two days later after carrying out post-mortem.
“The apathy of the respondents [police] led to the death of the petitioner’s son. So much so, the petitioner came to know about the death of his son after a while from the police,” the plea stated.
Mr. Pursotam has alleged that despite informing the local police station at Jaitpur in south Delhi on December 6, 2017, that his son was missing, he was not given any information till January 28, 2018, that his son’s body had been recovered and disposed of by December 10, 2017.
Mr. Pursotam said that he was called upon to identify unclaimed bodies several times. Finally on January 28, he was shown photographs of unidentified bodies that were disposed of, among which he found a picture of his son’s body.
The plea sought direction to the police to adopt a procedure to dispose off the abandoned bodies.