No deep freezer or cold room: For past 3 years, bodies exposed to the elements at this morgue in Noida’s Sector 94

“When this post-mortem house was set up, it had a deep freezer which could house eight bodies. There was a cold room as well,” says a staff member. “But the freezer only worked for two years. Later, a district official donated a freezer; this too worked only for six months. We have been forced to work without basic necessities needed to run a morgue for years now.”

He says the rising temperatures have caused serious problems. “In this summer heat, bodies decompose early and start smelling. We are working in this condition every day,” he says.

When contacted, the District Magistrate of Gautam Buddha Nagar, Manish Kumar Verma, tells The Indian Express that he has “directed the Chief Medical Officer to look into the matter”.

Verma says morgues are regulated by the health department and he was unaware of the prevailing issues. “Nobody informed me about this before. We will find the people responsible for this and take all the necessary action,” he says.

CMO Sunil Kumar Sharma did not respond to repeated calls for comment.

The morgue was run by four employees but once one of them passed away two years ago, he hasn’t been replaced. There is also a security guard who keeps a watch on the bodies as they lie scattered in the compound and inside the two rooms.

The job of the three employees is to conduct a post-mortem and store the bodies. The employees don’t even have a place to sit. There is an air conditioner in one room, the employees say, which was repaired six months ago after repeated complaints. “But it was so old that it didn’t work for long. It is lying defunct,” one of the employees says.

“There were six bodies here yesterday. The day before, we had nine bodies. Today, there are eight,” he says. “For the last three years, we have been in these circumstances. We take precautions… we wear gloves before we shift these bodies but we cannot do anything more than that. It is very difficult to work because of this stench. It is unbearable,” he says.

The bodies that arrive in this morgue come from the adjoining district hospital. “Many are unidentified. As per the law, we have to store them for 72 hours before we can perform their last rites,” another employee says. “And we do that every day.”

The bodies of those who are claimed by their next of kin are removed from here after the post-mortem.

The three employees have been working here for several years. “It is our job, government job,” an employee says. “We will have to do it,” he adds, as he gently places a body on a broken stretcher and prepares it for the last rites. The unidentified bodies are taken out of the morgue to a secluded place a few 100 metres away where they are consigned to the flames.