A hospital morgue keeps 26/11 case alive

After all,according to forensic experts,this is the longest that any unclaimed body has been preserved in India. The longest any human remains were preserved in a Mumbai morgue,until now,was the dismembered head of a male — suspected to be a terrorist but later ruled out — after the 7/11 serial blasts aboard Mumbai’s local trains in 2006. In that case,the face was reconstructed and the skull preserved for 128 days before the police disposed it,burying the remains according to Muslim rituals.

So,a team of medical and paramedical staff takes two rounds daily to check the room temperature. Entry inside is restricted to the bare minimum authorised technical and medical staff. “Since the bodies have been kept for so long,the room has been kept locked for days at a stretch with security staff keeping a watch,” says the doctor.

All nine bodies have been embalmed with multi-point injection of formalin-dipped gauze at five points — the abdomen,upper and lower extremities,brain and chest. “Full embalming was required since there was no timeline regarding how long they would be preserved,” the doctor added.

However,the hazards of the long preservation remain. “Though the bodies are preserved in cold storage,the stench is unbearable. A few days ago,one of us who had gone into the room rushed out and threw up,” says one attendant,refusing to be named. “The bodies are rotting. We are longing for the day when the hospital is directed to dispose the bodies.”

Dattu W,another attendant,compares himself to the mythological character of Valmiki. “According to legend,before he turned into a sage and wrote the Ramayana,Valmiki was a robber,whose justification for his crimes was that he was doing it to feed his family. We at the JJ Hospital morgue are no different — the work is depressing and dirty,but it ensures we put food on the table,” says the Class V dropout who has worked here for 30 years.

Dattu is one of seven attendants who work in eight-hour shifts,supervised by a mukadam. After three decades of dealing with death and corpses,Dattu is quite the grizzled veteran. “When I had just joined,the mere thought of working with dead bodies terrified me. But as time went by,we got used to the smells and to the idea of death around us. But still,even today,the prospect of working the night shift alone in the morgue fills me with dread. I always insist on having a fellow worker for company,” he says sheepishly.

Another attendant says nobody who works in the morgue lives beyond 55 years. “We have to deal with death and disease and it catches up with us,” he says,adding that the attendants do not wear their white uniforms because they stain easily.

But with Muslim organisations refusing to permit the burial of the bodies in their grounds,cross-border diplomatic pressures continuing,and officials saying the bodies are likely to be there until the trial ends,staff members at JJ’s Forensic Medicine Department know they have a significant role to play,as keepers of crucial evidence.

A MAMMOTH EXERCISE

This is the longest period that any terrorist’s body has been preserved in the country. Officials in Delhi said the bodies of the five gunmen killed following the attack on Parliament in December 2001 were buried after due procedure. In the 2002 Gujarat Akshardham Temple attack,the bodies of the two Pakistani gunmen killed were preserved for 35 to 40 days before being buried in India — Pakistan had denied that the men were Pakistanis. Police officials admitted there was some initial reluctance from the Muslim community to permit that burial too.