C’garh: Bodies of 3 Covid-19 victims cremated after 3 years

Raipur: The ghost of corona pandemic returned to haunt people here with the cremation of bodies of three people, who died of Covid-19 three years ago, in a crematorium here on Thursday evening.

The three bodies, lay unclaimed in morgue of the Dr B R Ambedkar Medical College Hospital here for three years, were cremated in the Devendra Nagar crematorium here in the presence of a team of doctors, officials of local civic body and policemen.

“The Covid-19 protocols were followed during cremation of the three bodies”, Subhra Singh, spokesman of the Dr B R Ambedkar Medical College and Hospital here said.

It was a flashback of the horror of the Covid-19 tragedy when the hearse carrying the three bodies was passing through the thoroughfares of Raipur city to the crematorium, leaving passersby awestruck and terrified.

The sight of apron-clad driver carrying the three bodies in hearse with two civic body officials accompanying him was literally a recreation of the horror of the Covid-19 pandemic that had left lakhs of people dead over a period of three years.

A senior officer of the hospital, requesting not to be quoted, told this newspaper that the three people died of Covid-19 in 2020-21.

The three bodies lay unclaimed in the morgue for three years since their families could not be traced out.

The state government has recently constituted a seven-member- team of doctors to probe the matter and trace out the families of the three deceased.

The team submitted its report on Tuesday, sources said.

While families of two deceased, Jabbar Singh and Dukhalheen Bai, were identified, the kin of the third deceased Pankaj Kumar could not be found, sources said.

The kin of Jabbar Singh, resident of Shahdol in Madhya Pradesh, and of Dukhalheen Bai, resident of Baloda Bazar in Chhattisgarh, were contacted by the police to take the bodies.

They however refused to take bodies of their kin arguing that they were already given bodies in the names of their kin and had cremated them during the Covid-19 pandemic period, a senior officer of the hospital said, unwilling to be quoted.

Finally, it was decided to cremate three bodies, he added.

However, a bone of the deceased Pankaj Kumar has been preserved for DNA test in future when his family would be traced out, sources said.