The bodies of 10 alleged thieves lynched by a mob in Rajapakar were dumped into the Ganga without proper cremation as no money was given by the Vaishali district administration for the funeral. So the police did what they routinely do with unclaimed bodies —- just flung them into the river. After the news broke on Sunday and angry Chief Minister Nitish Kumar cracked the whip, the funds came tumbling out. Eight of the 10 bodies that were fished out of the Ganga, after TV channels showed images of some of them lying on the river bank, were finally cremated on Sunday evening at a cost of Rs 30,000. “It is true that no money was released from the district administration for the funeral on Friday,” acknowledged Hajipur Sub Divisional Officer (SDO) Birendra Kumar Sinha. However, he blamed District Welfare Officer Sarvesh Bahadur Mathur, designated the magistrate for the cremation, for it, saying he did not make any requisition for the money. Mathur, who could not be contacted, was suspended yesterday by the Chief Minister for dereliction of duty. But sources said the officer had appealed higher officials for money but his requests were ignored. Incidentally, while the lower-level officers involved in the case were suspended, the DM and SP of Vaishali were just transferred. As per rules, in case of unclaimed bodies, the police station concerned is responsible for the funeral and the allotment per body is a meagre Rs 500. The amount is paid after the police give a report that the cremation has been carried out and it is realised only after a lengthy bureaucratic process.In the case of the 10 lynched men, the concerned police station was Rajapakar but the funeral took place under the Hajipur Town Police Station. Asked how the bodies landed up in the river, suspended Hajipur Town Police Station officer in-charge R K Singh said he was innocent and had no written orders for the cremation. “Despite our repeated pleas the concerned district authorities did not give us a single penny for the funeral. It was not possible for us to purchase wood and other ingredients for the cremation, involving a minimum expenditure of Rs 20,000. We were compelled to just throw the bodies into the river,” said a policeman involved.However, he insisted that only eight of the 10 bodies had been dumped in the river while cremation was performed for the two whose bodies had been identified by a 10-year-old Kureri boy as that of his father and uncle.At Konahra Ghat, where the bodies were first brought for cremation, Kailash Mallik said it was a regular habit of the police to dump unclaimed dead bodies in the river without a funeral. He added that the electric crematorium of the state government had been lying defunct for the past six years. After a TV channel flashed images of the bodies turning up in the Ganga and its banks, Malik and others were paid Rs 10,000 by an embarrassed district administration to fish out all the victims and finally cremate them.
