Bodies floating in Ganga ‘disturbing’, says Patna HC

Advocate General Lalit Kishore said the Bihar government had taken a serious note of it and the district magistrates of Buxar and Kaimur had talked to their counterparts in Balia and Ghajipur district of UP to prevent recurrence of any such situation.

The Patna High Court on Wednesday said the news of over 80 corpses found floating in the Ganga river in Bihar’s Buxar district was “disturbing” and sought to know what had been done in that regard.

The bench, however, wanted to know as to what happened to the bodies and whether their last rites were performed as per their religious beliefs. (ANI file photo)

The bench of Chief Justice Sanjay Karol and Justice Sanjay Kumar was hearing a public interest litigation (PIL) on Covid management.

Advocate General Lalit Kishore said the Bihar government had taken a serious note of it and the district magistrates of Buxar and Kaimur had talked to their counterparts in Balia and Ghajipur district of UP to prevent recurrence of any such situation.

“The positivity rate in Buxar and Kaimur is around 2-3%. During the interaction with UP authorities, the DMs of Buxar and Kaimur, who also visited Balia and Ghajipur, were informed by the ‘Dom Raza’ (in-charge of cremation ghats) that 40 bodies were thrown in the river, as many people don’t perform formal cremation. The officers also have videos of that,” the AG said.

Additional solicitor general KN Singh said the Central government too had taken cognizance of the matter and union Jal Shakti minister had cautioned the state governments of UP and Bihar against polluting the river.

The bench, however, wanted to know as to what happened to the bodies and whether their last rites were performed as per their religious beliefs.

KN Singh said the bodies were buried as it was difficult to identify the religion of the dead as also if they were Covid victims or not.

Govt submits affidavit

Earlier, the Bihar government submitted an affidavit saying it was making all possible attempts to increase testing across the state through rapid antigen tests at the primary health centres (PHC) to cover rural population, deployment of mobile testing teams at the panchayat level for rapid antigen tests and collection of samples for RT-PCR tests, house to house testing in containment zones across districts as per the guidelines of the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR).

The government said regular monitoring was being done to minimize delay in RT-PCR tests. “Samples collected are being sent to tagged labs the next day which undergo testing process and after result, it is updated on the state government portal. Due to spread of infection, sometimes lab staff and microbiologists also become infected, resulting in closure of labs for sanitization and fumigation. This leads to delay. Manpower has been increased at all labs for continuous work and instructions have been issued by the health department to update reports within 38 hours,” it said.

Experts’ committee

The health department, the court was told, has constituted an experts’ committee of renowned medical professionals to revise treatment protocols from time to time, determine guidelines to be issued to reduce the infection spread and identify areas where more manpower needs to be deployed. It will also do analysis of various health facilities for their improvement. The affidavit included the constitution of the experts’ committee on May 11.

Bio-waste disposal

The government affidavit says there are four common bio-medical waste treatment facilities in the state to cover 38 districts. All waste generated from testing, treatment, diagnosis, quarantine centres and vaccination centres are collected from all healthcare facilities by the vehicles provided by the plants and taken to treatment facilities. Testing done in fields and waste collected are also routed to treatment plans through PHCs.

Ramping up infra

The government has submitted it is ramping up infrastructure and boosting a three-tier state health infrastructure to cope with the rapidly rising infections to fight the double mutant strain of Covid-19. It said the health department has pressed into service 1137 ambulance vans and 59 mortuary vans and more are in the pipeline.