CHENNAI: A blame game is on at the Government General Hospital here over the mix-up of bodies that occurred on Monday.
When A Krishnamoorthy’s relatives came to the hospital to claim his body at 9.45 am, mortuary workers could not find it. An hour later, they discovered that it had been mistakenly given to the family of a Bengali labourer, Tapas Pal.
The panicked mortuary worker Dellibabu, who since then has been served with suspension orders, did not inform the hospital authorities about the mix-up.
“If we had known at that time, we could have stopped the cremation,’’ said a senior hospital official. By the time the hospital authorities were informed it was around 11.15 am and a policeman was sent to the crematorium, the body was already partly cremated.
The police, who had accompanied Krishnamoorthy’s relatives, also knew of the mix up when the mortuary workers discovered it and blamed the hospital authorities. “One was a medico-legal case and the other had died due to an illness. How could they mix it up,’’ the police asked. Once dead, every individual is given a death registry number and a tag. The tag is yellow for medico-legal cases and white for non medico-legal cases.
This apart, every individual has an in-patient number at the ward and a token number at the mortuary.
When a body is claimed, the mortuary worker asks the relatives or friends to identify the individual and then cross-check the tag numbers. “In this case, we think there was a language problem between the Bengali family and the mortuary worker. That apart, either they identified the wrong body or the mortuary worker packed the wrong body and gave it to them,’’ said Dean Dr T P Kalanidhi.
At any given point, there are at least 200 bodies at the hospital mortuary. Other hospital officials said the mistake probably occurred during the packing as the men died of different causes and it would be practically impossible to make a mistake in the identification.
Late on Monday evening, hospital authorities arranged for the ashes of Krishnamoorthy to be given to his family. A police officer accompanied a relative to the crematorium where the Bengali family had left the ashes. They were put in a bag and given to the relatives, a hospital official said. “The Bengali family had completed all the rites and rituals after the cremation and had left the city. So we gave the ashes to the family. We are now trying to get in touch with the Bengalis,’’ she added.
While it is the first time such an incident has occurred at the hospital, it may be recalled that there was a mix up of babies at another government hospital only a few months ago. Krishnamoorthy being a functionary of the opposition party makes the situation even trickier.
Director of Medical Education Dr S Vinayagam said, appropriate action would be taken following the enquiry. “We want to make sure such a thing never happens again in any of our hospitals and we intend to make someone responsible for it,’’ he said.