Hyderabad: It has not been an easy three days for the families of Mohammed Qureshi and Rashed Ali Khan, two Covid-19 victims whose bodies were switched at the Gandhi Hospital mortuary. The Qureshi family performed the last rites of Mohammed Qureshi, who had died of Covid-19 on Friday. On Thursday, they had performed the burial of Rashed Khan after they were mistakenly handed over his body.
The family of Rashed Khan is faced with the additional grief and trauma of not being able to perform his last rites.
Ubaid Ali Khan, nephew of Rashed Khan, said that they visited Khan’s grave and performed the last rites again. “We abandoned the idea of opening the grave to see the body. We have passed through difficult times. We decided to close the matter with a request that this kind of mistake should not be repeated so that no family undergoes the trauma we had to face.”
Khaja Pasha, brother-in-law of Mohammed Qureshi, said that they could not identify the body correctly earlier as the authorities did not allow them to see it from close quarters and that the mix-up was not their fault.
He said, “we participated in Rashed Khan’s funeral believing it was that of Mohammed Qureshi. But we came to know only on Thursday that there was a mistake in the identification of the body and the body of Mohammed Qureshi was still lying in the mortuary. Police approached us and we requested that we be allowed to perform the last rituals of this body as it belonged to us.’
He was all praise for Rashed Khan’s family, saying they cooperated in the process.
“We reached the Gandhi Hospital at 10 am to claim the body, but they released it after 5 pm and the funeral was held in the evening,” he said.
