Airport agony for dead & living

Calcutta: Throughout Saturday night, a body covered in a white cloth remained “seated” on a wheelchair at an immigration counter of Calcutta airport, feet sticking out. Next to it, a man sat sobbing.
At 10 on Sunday night, the man was still sitting next to the body and sobbing. Only that it was now in a coffin outside a police station.
Calcutta airport refused a dead Bangladeshi the right to lie on a trolley and then the permission to be coffin-bound somewhere inside the terminal, setting a shocking benchmark of shame on Sunday.
A young math teacher from Dhaka who had taken his octogenarian uncle to Vellore for treatment realised on boarding a Calcutta-Dhaka flight that he may be no more. He alerted the stewards, who called a doctor and confirmed the death.
When Rafiqul Islam’s uncle was put back on the wheelchair on which he had boarded the Air India Express plane around 11.30pm on Saturday, the man in his mid-30s did not know what lay in wait.
He wheeled the chair to the immigration counter and asked an official what he should do next. For nine hours after that he went from one official to another.
“I pleaded for a trolley. But no one cared,” said Rafiqul.
As the body lay “seated”, face covered with a piece of white cloth but feet bare, other passengers asked Rafiqul what had happened. When he told them Alaj Hasen Ali, 80, was dead, they were shocked.
A doctor came around 3am and wrote a death certificate saying it was an unnatural death. Rafiqul showed him the prescriptions from Vellore and Dhaka, which said his uncle was terminally ill. The doctor wouldn’t listen.
The airport has its own doctors, but an airport medical team under the Union ministry of health has to certify a foreigner’s death.
The mention of “unnatural death” in the certificate meant Rafiqul had to wait several hours more for a post-mortem and a slew of associated paraphernalia.
As Rafiqul waited for the police, he went several times to whoever he could with one request: “Please provide my uncle a place to rest. He was the one who brought me up....”
The pleading went on till 8am, when cops arrived from the airport police station, less than 50 metres away.
The police took the body away for the post-mortem. Rafiqul went to the Air India counter and wanted a refund for their tickets because the airline did not have a Dhaka flight on Sunday.
India’s national carrier refused to return the money without citing a reason. Rafiqul was at a loss.
He went to the Barrackpore morgue, from there to a mortuary where the body was embalmed and then to the Bangladesh high commission.
The police ensured a speedy post-mortem, but when Rafiqul returned to the airport with the body on Sunday evening, the authorities refused to let him in. “Where will I go now? Please arrange for a corner for my uncle to rest,” he told one official after another who hurled officialese at him.
Rafiqul sat on a minivan with his uncle’s coffin till late on Sunday. The police let him park outside their station and provided a guard to ensure dogs did not circle the casket.
A refund on Monday made little sense for Rafiqul. He had borrowed money to buy a Monday morning ticket.
08/11/10 Sanjay Mandal/The Telegraph

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Categories: Airports Nov 2010