Lack of coherent mechanism leads to mix-up of bodies

Mangalore: Twelve of the 158 passengers of the Air India Express flight killed in the May 22 crash here had to be buried in unmarked graves.
According to the district administration, the 12 bodies could not be identified because of a mix-up. Some families took away the bodies that did not belong to them in the confusion that prevailed after the crash. The body of Mohammed Zubair Ziad (4) was taken away by a family that believed that it was the body of an adult.
Narrating a similar incident, Vidya Dinker, an activist who was involved in the relief operations, said: “One family had identified their kin and filled the claims form at the Wenlock Hospital. They then moved to another hospital to look for other relatives. By the time they came back, somebody else had taken the body.”
There was no coherent mechanism to identify the bodies, and some junior policemen were handling the process.
“Disaster Victim Identification” guidelines issued by the Interpol were not adhered to immediately. Despite the Interpol's warning that visual identification is “notoriously unreliable and should be avoided at all costs.”
136 of the 158 bodies were handed over on this basis alone. The Interpol, instead, recommends the use of medical and forensic tests.
Inspector-General of Police Gopal B. Hosur said that there was no other alternative. All the bodies could not have been identified by DNA tests.
District Health Officer H. Jagannath said as the district's storage facilities were woefully inadequate, the bodies would have started decomposing.
07/06/10 Sudipto Mondal/The Hindu

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