HYDERABAD: Who does the dirty work for cops, say when they have to recover bloated dead bodies from nalas or putrefied ones hanging from ceilings? They dial the number of one M Srinivas. Cops from different parts of the city rely on him to shift decomposed bodies from place to other. In his 26 years of service, he has done things that most of us would not dare to — recover bodies that have been decomposing for several days, sometimes infested with maggots or with intestines and brain popping out.
On May 20, when the bloated body of a newborn baby was found floating in a nala in Ashok Nagar, Srinivas was summoned. Armed with just a pair of gloves, he waded into neck-deep sewage slush using bamboo sticks and managed to retrieve the body. But that’s not all. When he finds a family struggling without money to cremate their deceased kin, he pitches in. A resident of Boiguda, Srinivas Gupta started this service in 1992.
“In 1995, I met a family that was struggling without money to cremate their kin. I helped them by shifting the body and cremating it in a graveyard.”
“Then, I started shifting people who suffered deep injuries to head and wounds infested with maggots to hospitals. Over the years, the cops came to know of my service and started to call me when they have to fish bodies out of the Tank Bund or nalas and other places,” says Srinivas speaking to Express.
He runs ‘The Real Vivek Foundation’ in the memory of his son who died at the age of four. “I do not take funds from anyone, the foundation and my work is dependent on the money I make as a dealer in second-hand vehicles.
I earn around `5,000 a day and most of it goes into this service. I have been doing this for 26 years. Even hours before my wedding, I helped police shift the body of a person who had committed suicide. I cannot stop doing this work,” says Srinivas.