In a mortifying error, the wrong corpse was handed to a family by a city-based hospital and had to be exhumed to be handed to the correct one.
Nasreen Bano, passed away on Thursday at VS Hospital, and her body was kept in the morgue. "Members of our family and other relatives were coming from Karnataka for the last rites," said Wasim Shaikh, Nasreen's brother. The 25-year-old had come to the city to deliver her third child and was pregnant at the time of her death.
In the same morgue lay the body of 19-year-old Mittal Jadav, who had been stabbed earlier in the day. Her body was brought to the hospital for post-mortem and the grief-stricken family refused to collect her remains until the attacker was nabbed.
Police arrested an accused on Thursday evening and the family went to collect the student's corpse at around 2 am on Friday. However, they were given Nasreen Bano's remains by mistake.
"Neither the family, peon or police identified nor confirmed that it was Mittal," said Bijal Patel, the mayor of Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation and chairman of VS Hospital Board.
The error was discovered when Wasim came to retrieve his sister's remains. "Her body was not there," he said.
Local councillor Badruddin Shaikh intervened and untangled the mess with the help of the police. Fortunately the Bavla-based Jadav's belong to the Vankar community that buries, not cremates, their dead.
The police exhumed Nasreen's body on Friday evening in the presence of a magistrate and handed it to the family. "When we saw the body, we realised something was different," said Mittal's uncle, "But we assumed it was due to chemical changes caused by decomposition."
Both families will lay their relatives to rest on Saturday.
"This is an unusual incident," admitted Patel. "Such things should never happen. We have sought an inquiry into the negligence, and will ensure due processes are followed at every department of a hospital. Serious actions will be taken against those responsible."
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 "Nasreen Bano, Mittal Jadav")
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