Police won’t allow cHEMBUR sOCIETY to perform LAST rites of senior citizen.
Shanta Sharma died of renal failure at a Chembur hospital on September 17. Since then the 61-year-old woman’s corpse has been lying unattended at the Rajawadi Hospital morgue.
This despite all members of the Basant Park Co-operative Housing Society in Chembur, where Sharma lived in a 3BHK flat for the past 40 years, coming forward to do her last rites.
Officers of the Chembur police station, bang opposite Basant Park, say the neighbours cannot be allowed to fulfil their duty because they are not “immediate or blood relatives” of Sharma.
“All we want to do is give her a decent funeral,” said Neeta Sahani, a neighbour of Sharma. “We believe in dignity in death.” Sharma has willed her flat to a charitable trust and the society members have no ulterior motive, she said.
The members say Sharma, a divorcee, was not in touch with her husband or any other relative, distant or near, for at least 25 years. “We do not know how to contact them. Besides, she did not want to have anything to do with them,” said an office-bearer of the society, on condition of anonymity.
Sharma was ailing since June 2009. Her neighbours often pooled money to buy food and medicine for her since she could hardly step out of her flat.
“On September 14, we found her lying unconscious in her house,” said Raju Kanchwala, another neighbour. “She had high blood pressure and uncontrolled diabetes. So we rushed her to Surana Sethia Hospital, where her condition deteriorated and she died three days later.” The society members together spent about Rs1 lakh on her treatment. “We took her death certificate and all the required documents from the hospital,” said Kanchwala. “But when we approached the Chembur police station for a no-objection certificate, they ‘confiscated’ her body and said we would not be allowed to cremate it.”
Officers at the police station, however, said they were just obeying the law. “As no relatives have come to claim the body, as per law we have to wait for some days for someone to turn up,” said deputy commissioner of police (zone VI) Dilip Sawant.
“We have informed the administrator-general of Maharashtra about the matter and will act once we receive further orders,” he said.
According to lawyer Yasmin Tavaria, there is nothing illegal if the society members who have been looking after an aged single lady give her a decent funeral after her demise. In fact, the police even cremate the unclaimed bodies of accident victims.
—With inputs from Divyesh Singh
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