HYDERABAD: When 60-year-old Mohammed Muneeruzamma from Tolichowki passed away in Jeddah on Tuesday, his family’s grief was compounded after realising they might get to see him one last time due to financial constraints. It was then that they approached Minister of External Affairs Sushma Swaraj and asked for her help in shifting his mortal remains as soon as possible.
What will happen in Muneeruzamma’s case is yet to be seen, but the issue points to a deeper problem that families have to face if their loved ones die abroad. Even in the recent Sharath Koppu’s case, who died in a shootout in the US, his family had to spend nearly Rs 20 lakh to bring his body home. But, why?
Firstly, though the Ministry of External Affairs remains proactive in responding to such cases, the truth is that the local administration’s authority supersedes that of the MEA.
Until and unless the local administration is satisfied with the documentation or the fees, the MEA can only play the role of a facilitator between the administration and the victim’s family.
“...documents such as clearance and arrangements for the embalming of mortal remains, clearance from local immigration/customs department, and so on are required. These procedures may differ from country to country,” reads the MEA’s guidelines for transporting mortal remains.
Although there is usually no delay in repatriation in the cases of natural deaths, the time taken is delayed considerably in the cases of unnatural deaths, mainly due to local procedures involved for investigating the cause of death, according to MEA.
A case of exception was that of Sharath Koppu, whose transfer was expedited mainly due to public attention. “Documentation, which usually takes days, was arranged within hours,” Prasad Koppu, Sharath’s relative told Express. “The state government and the Centre helped us a lot with that.”
However, this has not been the case for many. Bheem Reddy, a migrant rights activist, said that in some cases, bodies of Indians dead abroad were kept in mortuaries for up to a year.
Reddy opined that the cause of delay was due to non-cooperation by employers, bureaucratic red tape, and financial trouble. Indeed death is expensive. But not everyone has the financial capability to support this cost.
Statistics speak
According to a response given to a query in parliament, 7694 bodies of Indians were stranded in foreign countries in 2015, of which 2690 bodies were in Saudi Arabia and 1,540 in UAE alone.
As many as 31,318 Indians have lost their lives abroad between 2014 and December 2017, as revealed by MEA in parliament.