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Families of Meerut traders killed in crash given wrong bodies
The mix-up came to light on Tuesday morning when it was time to take the body to the cremation ground from the residence in Swami Pada locality, and a friend of one of the deceased, Abhinav Agarwal, 42, opened the shroud to pour ‘Ganga jal’ in his mouth, police said
Gurugram: In a case of negligence, health department officials in Palwal civil hospital allegedly handed over wrong bodies to families of two Meerut-based traders after autopsy. Both had died in a road accident on the Kundli-Ghaziabad-Palwal Expressway on Monday.
The mix-up came to light on Tuesday morning when it was time to take the body to the cremation ground from the residence in Swami Pada locality, and a friend of one of the deceased, Abhinav Agarwal, 42, opened the shroud to pour ‘Ganga jal’ in his mouth, said police.
The deceased’s friend Saurav Agarwal raised suspicion and asked close relatives to reverify the body identity, said police.
The shocked family noticed that the authorities had blundered, and alerted the other grieving family to also re-check.
Police officers said when the family of the second deceased, Amit Agarwal, 45, unsealed the shroud, they too found it did not belong to them.
Following this, both families shared photos of the bodies to find out that they had actually got swapped before being handed over at the government mortuary in Palwal on Monday.
Tarun Gupta, brother-in-law of Abhinav, said both the families soon took the bodies in ambulances and exchanged them. He alleged that there were no marks or tags on the packed bodies while being handed over to them by the authorities.
“The staff at the mortuary had insisted not to open the bodies, as they were in bad shape due to the accident. Had Saurav not opened it, we would have cremated the wrong body. The additional trauma amid the grief would have been immense,” he added.
Gupta said that the other family had not even opened their body until alerted. “None from both families would have come to know that we didn’t even get the bodies of our actual loved ones,” he added.
Amarnath Agarwal, father of Amit Agarwal (the other deceased), said nobody at their home realised what had taken place. “Abhinav’s family alerted us after which we checked while we were taking it for cremation. The body was not of my son. I was not in a situation to deal with anything. Other relatives handled the situation,” he said.
An inquiry was ordered on Wednesday, said a senior health department official at the Palwal civil hospital, privy to the matter.
“We have taken suo-motu cognizance even though none of the two families filed any complaint. The mortuary staff have said that they had shown the bodies to the families before being handed over. In such a case, this negligence should not have taken place,” he said, adding action will be taken against the erring employees.
On Monday morning, the two traders, one resident of Swami Pada and the other Shubhkamna apartment, Laxmi Vihar, were heading in a Maruti Wagon-R to Vrindavan (Mathura) from Meerut to buy some items for their business, just when they rear-ended a trailer truck that suddenly applied breaks on the expressway and died on the spot, said police.
Such was the impact that the half of the car had got crushed beneath the truck chassis leaving it mangled beyond recognition, it added. A case of causing death by negligence and rash driving was registered against the unidentified trailer driver at Chandhut police station in Palwal and the suspect was yet to be arrested.
