Please take this dead weight off us

Victoria Hospital mortuary staff is at sea as railway cops keep sending more dead bodies with no identification, resulting in a space crunch

Please take this dead weight off us

Victoria Hospital mortuary staff is at sea as railway cops keep sending more dead bodies with no identification, resulting in a space crunch

There's a cold war in the city, with death at its centre. The Bangalore City Railway police and the administration of the Victoria Hospital mortuary are apparently at loggerheads over cadavers.

No space for the dead: The railway police had transferred 216 dead
bodies to the Victoria hospital mortuary, of which 18 are still lying there.
u00a0Pic/Manjunath Hanji

The mortuary administration is upset over the cops not identifying the relatives of some of the dead persons. This has led to cadavers lying unclaimed at the mortuary, and subsequently taking up space, which could be used for storing new dead bodies.

Last year, the railway police transferred 216 dead bodies to the mortuary, of which 18 are still lying there.
They routinely send the bodies to Victoria Hospital, but now the hospital administration has asked the police to identify the relatives of the dead as early as possible.

Though the city has many mortuaries such as Ramaiah and Bowring but the busiest of the lot is the one in Victoria hospital. The hospital has 48 cadaver cabinets. Of the total bodies stored in these, 23 are unidentified. A minimum 10 new bodies arrive every day. The mortuary's 'dead body cutters' cut a maximum 7 to 9 bodies per day.

Since most of these cabinets are full, the administration keeps the bodies outside. This leads to relatives of new arrivals quarreling with staff, because of the lack of space.

Gathering rust
Two months after the Central Government sanctioned a new dissection table to the Victoria hospital, it is getting rusted because PWD, the concerned department has not even started to work on the basement. To fix the table, there is a need of tiles and water supplies. The table is lying in the storeroom still. The hospital administration alleges that they have asked the department for help, but to no avail.

Abdul, an autopsy staff said, "These days the number of arrivals is decreasing because Bowring and Ramaiah hospitals are getting more bodies. But the number of unidentified bodies is more here."

Railway PSI Nagaraju said, "We are doing our best but it is difficult to identify most of the bodies. That is the reason we are facing a lot of problem to solve the cases. Even if we get minimum information, we can move faster on the cases."

Victoria Hospital RMO said, "We are somehow just managing."