After agonising search & identification, relatives find bodies claimed by others

BHUBANESWAR: Apart from struggling to find and then going through the harrowing ritual of identifying bodies at the mortuary, relatives of the Bahanaga triple-train accident victims are facing a new problem - that of swapping of bodies. Munshi Kisku, a resident of Jharkhand, boarded the Coromandel Express on Friday wearing a light green check shirt.
Another person from Muzaffarpur in Bihar travelling in the same train was also wearing a similar shirt. Both died in the accident. When Kisku's family members identified his body from the album of bodies, they came to know that the family from Muzaffarpur had already claimed the same body as that of their son Manohar Manjhi.
"Immediately after coming to know about the incident, we called Manjhi's family and told them that they had taken the wrong body. But they were not ready to believe that it was a mistake. We matched the two photos and said they were wearing similar shirts, but the trousers were different. Besides, there was a red stripe in Kisku's shirt which was clearly visible in the body they took. But still they did not agree. We are now doing the DNA test of Kisku's brother to match it with the body," said Avinash Thakur, deputy labour commissioner of Jharkhand, facilitating the handing over of bodies and treatment of injured persons from his state at AIIMS.
This was not the only case, the family members of Hansraj Kumar from Dumka district of Jharkhand are claiming a body which has already been taken by relatives of Ramesh Murmu of Bhagalpur district in Bihar.
This unfortunate situation of body-swapping has caused immense pain and trauma for the affected families. Sibakanta Roy from Cooch Behar district of West Bengal has been crying inconsolably after he came to know that the body of his 22-year-old son, Bipul Roy, was taken by another family from Bihar. "After the accident, I went to Balasore, where they sent me to a private hospital in the city. When I reached there, they said all bodies had been shifted to AIIMS. After reaching here I came to know that his body was taken by someone else. Now what can I do?," he said crying.
"After identification of bodies by the family members, verification has been done with proper documents and a protocol is being followed to handover the bodies. As the bodies have been defaced and damaged, there could be chances of families identifying the wrong body. But in document verification there should not be any mistake, said Ashutosh Biswas, director of AIIMS, Bhubaneswar.