In a move to spare the people visiting the Osmania General Hospital and Gandhi General Hospital from the stench emanating from rotting unidentified and unclaimed bodies that have been kept at the morgues, the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) has given orders to Satya Harishchandra Foundation, an NGO, to remove and cremate them.
Satya Harischandra Foundation on Saturday lifted 89 unclaimed bodies from Osmania General Hospital’s mortuary and 41 from Gandhi General Hospital’s morgue, K Rajeswar Rao, founder and secretary of the foundation told Express. The 130 bodies were burned at the outskirts of city on Sunday.
But the foundation did not reveal the place where they performed the last rites of the bodies.
Rao alleged that the hospital managements were not disposing the unclaimed bodies as the officials wanted to sell them to private hospitals in Andhra Pradesh and other neighbouring states.
There would be around 150 unclaimed dead bodies at Osmania General Hospital’s mortuary of which only 89 have been disposed. To dispose the bodies, the GHMC had called for Expression of Interests from NGOs and other agencies dealing with lifting and cremation of bodies and the latter were asked to submit the EoIs by October end.
“Finally, Satya Harishchandra Foundation, after filing many petitions at the High Court for removal of the unclaimed bodies, was given the orders by the GHMC,” he said.
The bodies are getting piled up at the mortuaries with residents of Amberpet not allowing cremation of the decomposed bodies at the electrical crematorium due to the nauseating smell. The highly decomposed bodies have been lying at the Osmania mortuary for the last three months. The bodies should be cremated within 3 to 4 days after death. But here, the dead bodies have been lying for more than three months, Rao said.
They said that they had invited EoI from NGOs for removal and cremation of the bodies. According to information, on an average, both Osmania and Gandhi hospitals get five unclaimed bodies per day.
Even as the Satya Harishchandra Foundation was given a contract by the GHMC to cremate the unclaimed bodies, it is facing a stiff resistance from the local residents of Amberpet to cremate them at the electric crematorium.
However, the foundation is cremating 2 to 3 unclaimed bodies at Sanjeeva Reddy Nagar electrical crematorium per day which are being lifted from Gandhi and Chest hospitals.