Three weeks after Manipur violence, several bodies lie unclaimed in hospital morgues

On May 22, when the official death toll was 74, Kuldiep Singh, Security Advisor to the Chief Minister, had said that only five bodies had been claimed by the families so far.

At the Jawaharlal Nehru Institute of Medical Sciences in Imphal East, none of the 19 bodies brought to the mortuary by security personnel since the start of the clashes have been claimed. Though the post-mortems have been completed, no families have come forward to claim them.

Remains of a car that had been torched during the clashes at Haokip Veng. (Express Photo: Jimmy Leivon/File)

“The normal protocol that is usually followed when police bring in a body from, say, a car accident, is that a notification is issued in newspapers saying that a body of such and such height was found, describing the clothes, etc. If nobody comes forward to identify and claim the body within 72 hours, the state disposes of the body. However, this time, the state has not stepped in to invoke this,” said a source at the institute.

The institute has two freezers with two cabinets each, with a combined capacity to keep only 12 bodies at a time. “It has become very difficult. The remaining bodies have been embalmed and placed under fans but it’s summer and it’s very humid. The decay has started to set in, they are decomposing,” said the source.

Similarly, many bodies continue to remain unclaimed at the Regional Institute of Medical Sciences in Imphal West. While the total number of bodies brought to the mortuary could not be confirmed, Imphal West Deputy Commissioner Th Kirankumar Singh said 20 bodies there are from the district, of which one has been claimed so far.

Since some of the bodies had identifiers such as Aadhaar cards on their person, he said that about 9-10 of them were identifiable. “But the families are not coming forward to claim them. The rest are said to be unidentified. Many people have moved out of the city, and families who are in the hill districts may not be able to come forward to identify and claim the bodies of their kin here,” he said.

The Jawaharlal Nehru Institute of Medical Sciences in Imphal East and Regional Institute of Medical Sciences in Imphal West are the state’s two big hospitals where most of the victims of the violence – from the immediate neighbourhood as well as from surrounding areas – were taken.

At the district hospital in Churachandpur, which was among the worst-hit districts in the state, all the 24 bodies which were brought to the mortuary continue to lie unclaimed. This is double the capacity of the mortuary, which is equipped to keep only 12 bodies at a time.

Destruction raged throughout Haokip Veng as ethnic violence rocked Manipur. (Express Photo: Jimmy Leivon/File)

“We have tried to manage the rest with formalin and other solutions, but that has its limitations. We are burning agarbattis because the smell from the decomposition has become so strong,” said a doctor at the hospital.

The situation at the Churachandpur hospital, however, is different from that in Imphal. According to the doctor, 20 of these bodies are of “tribals” and have been identified by their families, while the remaining four are from the Meitei community.

However, even the bodies which have been identified have not been claimed by their families, because the Indigenous Tribal Leaders’ Forum has asked them to refrain from doing so.

“There are many unidentified bodies from our community lying in hospitals in Imphal so we are not ready to perform the last rites. We want to have a common ceremony with honourable last rites for all the martyrs on one day, so we are waiting for those bodies to return home,” said an ITLF leader.

Demolished houses in a violence-hit area of Manipur. (PTI Photo)

Since the outbreak of the violence, the boundaries between the Meitei-dominated areas and Kuki-Zomi dominated areas in the state have hardened, with most of the Kuki-Zomi people in the valley having gone to the hills under security cover and vice versa.

A minister in the Manipur government, who did not want to be named, said the state was refraining from disposing of the bodies because of the sensitivity of the situation.

“We are holding back from any kind of action which may inflame more passions. We strongly feel that the last rites of all the deceased should be performed as soon as possible. If the family is coming forward to claim a body, it is being handed over. But the bodies have to be identified and they have to be claimed. Due to the situation, one section of the population is not able to travel to the other side; similarly, the movement of the other section too is restricted,” said the minister.

The clashes between the two groups began after a “tribal solidarity march” was held by the All Tribal Students’ Union Manipur on May 3 to protest against the Meitei demand for Scheduled Tribe status. It came after months of simmering tension in the Kuki-dominated areas against several actions of the state government, including crackdowns on poppy plantations, eviction drives, and frequent allegations that the Kukis of Churachandpur were sheltering “foreigners” from Myanmar.