While Government-owned hospitals are in news for wrong reasons, an incident of a dead body swapping from the morgue house of the Rourkela Government Hospital (RGH) here has come to the fore.
The body of a senior citizen was reportedly wrongly handed over to Government Railway Police (GRP) officials in place of dead body of a youth. After the incident coming to light, the police exchanged the dead body and conducted post mortem on Thursday, before handing over back the same to GRP for its burial.
A GRP DSP is now probe the matter and has asked for explanation from its personnel involved where as RGH authorities are now contemplating to start the tagging system of the dead bodies to avoid such type of incidents in future.
Sources said on December 24, the GRP had recovered an unidentified youth (35) from the railway track with multiple injury marks on his body and had rushed him to RGH. The youth had succumbed to the injuries on December 26 evening, following which his dead body was shifted to the morgue of RGH.
Again on December 26, a group of youth had found an old man (about seventy years) lying on road side near Jagada area of the city, following which they had rushed him to RGH. But he was declared brought dead by the doctors, following which his body was sent to morgue. However, the youths had reported the matter to the Jhirpani police.
On December 28, the aforesaid youths, along with the Jhirpani cops had reached the morgue house to cremate the dead body but there was no dead body of that old man. Tension had prevailed at the spot and after inquiry about the matter, the officials of RGH were able to detect that the dead body of the old man had been exchanged with dead body of a youth, reportedly on December 27, which was taken by the GRP. later, the bodies were handed over to the respective police teams.
“As per the direction of GRP SP, I have ordered for an explanation from two constables and an ASI in the matter,” said DSP Majhi,
Similarly, RGH CMO Rama Chandra Behera said “We are going to start the tagging system on the dead bodies so that this sort of incident won’t occur in future.”
