Police Bust Racket Involved in Smuggling of Bodies

INDIA – Moradabad police busted a racket involving smuggling of unclaimed and unidentified bodies from the district morgue to some private medical institutions. A doctor and two of his subordinates at the mortuary have been arrested for their direct involvement in the crime but police refused to identify the cadaver buyers.

The crackdown, supervised by DIG, Moradabad, Ashok Kumar Singh, began well past Wednesday midnight on the basis of some concrete information about the location of the bodies, availability of related documents and those involved in the crime.

When the cops reached the district morgue, they found two bodies tied together on a single stretcher kept behind a table in a corner of the room that was used for storing viscera samples.

Going through the records of the two bodies, cops were shocked to discover that though they had been shown to have undergone postmortem examinations, there was not a single incision or stitch on them. They then arrested Dr Pankaj Giri who had signed the autopsy report and subsequently nabbed Hari Singh ? the pharmacist who assisted the doctor.

The sweeper on duty ? Anand ? was also arrested.”During interrogation the three began to blame each other for the racket,” said DIG AK Singh. Dr Pankaj Giri, in an informal interaction with a section of media after being produced in a local court, said it was not his responsibility to physically verify if the body in question has been operated upon. ”My part is limited to analysing what is asked by the pharmacist. If he comes up with specifics, I have no reason to be suspicious that they are not of a particular body,” he said. However, pharmacist Hari Singh and sweeper Anand stated in their interrogation that they did whatever Dr Giri asked them to do.

According to the chief medical officer (CMO), Moradabad, Dr RK Saxena, the entire post-mortem exercise is conducted under the supervision of the doctor on duty. Medical experts say it was almost impossible for the pharmacist or other subordinate staff to mislead the doctor ? in this case Dr Giri. The trio was produced before a local court which sent them in a 15-day judicial remand, till further orders.

The two cadavers, of males aged around 35 and 60 years, were recovered from Moradabad railway station on Monday. As per records, the two bodies had been brought to the morgue by constables Ajay Pal and Jai Bhagwan of the Government Railway Police (GRP), Moradabad. Mortuary records showed that their post-mortem examination was carried out by Dr Pankaj Giri at 12:55 pm on Wednesday.

Sourec: Times of India