169 unidentified bodies buried in eight months

At least 169 people buried in graves during the first eight months of year 2016 may remain unidentified for several reasons.   

Data collected by The News revealed that the city police found dead bodies of 16 newborn babies, 23 women, 34 old-aged citizens and 67 addicts from different parts during the last eight months.

During the period 29 persons, who had lost their lives in different road accidents, were also among unidentified bodies moved to city morgues.

As per the legal procedure, when police find an unidentified body, it should take action under Section 49 of CrPc.

Under it, police have to shift the body to city morgue for postmortem, take pictures and thumb impressions of the deceased, advertise the pictures in newspapers, take dental charts and send thumb impressions to the Nadra for identification. The law also bounds the police to keep the record for at least ten years.

However, it is alleged that police are in practice to declare an unidentified person an addict and close the case without completing the legal process. Collected data showed that the total buried bodies included 67 addicts, 34 old men, 16 newborn children, 23 women and 29 persons recovered in road accidents. 

Most of the bodies were recovered from Data Darbar, Tibbi City, Bhaati Chowk, and Lytton Road while the percentage of addicts and beggars is high among the 169 deceased. Police claimed that it is because that drugs and food are easily available in the areas.

The total number of dead houses is just two in Lahore and it is difficult to manage bodies for long time. A doctor of Jinnah hospital said police could easily identify the unidentified dead but they were not interested in it.

The study carried out by The News also revealed that other than police there is no public sector department, which is responsible for keeping the record of unidentified bodies in the metropolis.

Police officials, doctors and officials of different NGOs demanded the government to establish a separate department for the purpose.

Younas Bhatti, a spokesperson for Edhi Foundation, said that often police could not find a woman to bath a body of a female while in the case of a decomposed body nobody was ready for the task.

He said city morgue should have facilities. A Rescue official said that when a woman’s body was recovered, her bath was a big issue for police because no woman was will to give the bath. Likewise, when bodies are decomposed, it is difficult for Rescuers to bury them. 

An official of city morgue said that giving the bath to bodies was not the responsibility of morgue.

He said their job was to carry out postmortem and hand over the body to police. In most cases police called Edhi or any other NGO for burial of unidentified persons.

He said many people remained unidentified because police didn’t find any identification paper from their pockets as their wallets were stolen by someone in the crowd. He said ethical training of society was also vital.

The duty officer at Jinnah Morgue, Amjad Bhatti, said apart from Edhi Foundation, a few more NGOs shared the important responsibility of maintaining record of unidentified persons and unclaimed bodies in Lahore. DIG Operations Dr Haider Ashraf, while talking to The News, disagreed with the number of the unidentified deceased persons said that police always followed the legal procedure.

He added most of the dead were identified later. However, he said the record of cases registered under Section 174 of PPC was kept at police stations.

As such cases were closed, the data takes time to be maintained for the DIG office, he added.

The DIG Operations claimed in the cases of 169 unidentified bodies, police also completed its procedure.

He said DNA record should also be made part of the Nadra database after which several issues  could be resolved. He said the DNA bank would also help identifying decomposed bodies.  —The writer, Aneeq Zaidi, is an intern at The News