Over 3000 unclaimed, unknown dead bodies every year found in #NewDelhi #India
http://nyti.ms/1y9Bpbj
NEW DELHI — The most lost of the lost people of Delhi end up here, in a cold metal-sided room at the Sabzi Mandi mortuary. They are lying on every available surface, including the blood-smeared floor, some with body parts flung out in the position of their death, protruding from the white plastic bags that are used to store them.
The smooth, sharp curve of a man’s naked hip, all bone and no flesh. A jaw, with teeth. Hands folded over an abdomen as if at rest, or extended in some last intercepted expression of feeling.
In a corner, the bodies are crowded together on the floor. The mortuary attendants say it is so difficult to procure supplies as basic as disinfectant from the government that workers bring soap from home so that they can wash their hands after handling the bodies, many of which are infected with tuberculosis. So it would be unrealistic for the unidentified dead to expect a metal shelf of their own.
“You’ll find them one on top of the other,” said the mortuary’s chief doctor, L. C. Gupta. “Where are we supposed to put them?”
On average, the police in this city register the discovery of more than 3,000 unidentifiable bodies a year — unidentifiable not because they are unrecognizable, but because they carry no documents and there is no one who knows them.
It is an extraordinary number.
In Delhi, one regularly encounters the unknown dead: By law, photographs of their corpses must be published in newspapers and posted in police stations, under the Dickensian heading “Hue and Cry Notice.” Protocol requires the mortuary to hold each body for 72 hours so that relatives have a chance to spot the announcements and claim the dead, but Dr. Gupta said they rarely do.
“Nobody reads them,” he said. Police officers are also expected to investigate. Asked about this, Dr. Gupta gave a small, dry smile. “They may or may not try,” he said.
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This is no city for the poor. Drive around New Delhi at night, and great numbers of men, women and children can be seen curled up on the sidewalks sleeping, or trying to sleep. These people — “pavement dwellers,” they are called — figure in occasional newspaper articles about drunken drivers whose vehicles jump the curb and plow into a row of sleepers....
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/07/w...unknown-and-unclaimed.html?smid=fb-share&_r=0
