Written by Neetika Jha In a semi-dark and dusty room, three electricians, guided by their supervisor, were trying to repair four non-functional deep freezers at the post-mortem house in Gautam Buddha Nagar on Monday. Wires lay in a jumbled mess while cobwebs covered every inch of space. The room was bathed in a greenish hue, from a film pasted over the window. The men had arrived at 1 pm. Around 3 pm, they stepped out to buy the necessary equipment and wires. By 3.30 pm, they got one of the freezers up and running. Last week, The Indian Express reported about how this mortuary in Sector 94, set up in 2004, has been functioning for the past few years without deep freezers or a cold room to preserve the bodies and how employees were forced to work amid the stench. Chief Medical Officer Dr Sunil Kumar Sharma told The Indian Express that one deep freezer, which can store four bodies, is now functional. “Around 11 am today, the Additional CMO and I visited the post-mortem house. We received funds from the health department to rectify one deep freezer. We are trying to look into the other three. We are waiting for the (remaining) funds; if we don’t get it, we will try to arrange it ourselves,” Sharma added. When The Indian Express visited the mortuary on Monday, the electricians were at work. One of them said: “We have figured out the problem in one of the four deep freezers and that has been fixed. We are trying to determine the issues with the other three.” There was a problem with the compressor of the now-functioning freezer, said contractor Ravinder Thakur. As of 9 pm, the men were still on the premises, trying to repair the second freezer, he said. Bijender (50), one of the three staffers at the post-mortem house, said “they heard that a junior engineer from Lucknow sent the electricians”. A 27-year-old constable with the Gautam Buddha Nagar police who was at the mortuary — she was there for the autopsy of a 24-year-old woman who died by suicide — said the condition was a little better now compared to the last time she came in 2021. Back then, she was at the mortuary in connection with the case of a 20-year-old woman who had died in an accident on her way to Delhi from Mathura. “It was raining that day. Bodies were lying in the compound, one on top of another, rotting. blood had mixed with water. Today, it looks a little better, otherwise you could not even sit here,” she said. On Monday, the bodies were inside the rooms and a drain flowing outside the morgue was clean, she said. The constable, however, pointed to the lack of facilities for family members or police personnel accompanying the body and said there should be at least one room for them to sit in. “Everyone is sitting on the road,” she said, requesting the ambulance van driver to open the door of his vehicle so she could sit inside. “I have to sit here till evening,” she said. There are six bodies today; one post-mortem takes around 45 minutes to be completed. Outside the post-mortem house, security guard Jitendar Kumar was hopeful that the issue would be resolved soon. “A few ACs have also been repaired.,” he said.
