PIL for guidelines on disposal of unidentified bodies: HC seeks Delhi govt, police response

The Delhi High Court Tuesday sought response of the AAP government and police on a PIL seeking framing of guidelines on disposing of abandoned or unidentified bodies.

A bench of Justices S Ravindra Bhat and Prateek Jalan issued notice to the Delhi government and police and sought their stand by April 24 on the petition alleging that unidentified or abandoned bodies are disposed of mechanically without performing the mandatory formalities.

The petition has been moved by Ramanuj Pursotam, who has claimed that his son had gone missing on December 4, 2017, and later his body was recovered on December 8 the same year by police, which disposed of the body two days later after carrying out postmortem.

According to his plea, filed through advocate Shashank Deo Sudhi, he had informed police on December 6, 2017 that his son was missing, but the agency had taken no action and lodged a missing person's case only on December 27, 2017.

Thereafter, on several dates in January last year, he was called to identify unclaimed bodies and finally on January 28, he was shown photographs of unidentified bodies that were disposed of, the plea said, adding that among the photos, Pursotam found a picture of his son's body.

The petition has alleged that despite informing the local police station at Jaitpur in south Delhi on December 6, 2017 that his son was missing, the petitioner was not given any information till January 28, 2018, that his son's body had been recovered and disposed of by December 10, 2017.

Citing his personal experience in such a situation, the petitioner has sought directions to the Delhi government and police to publicise request for identifying abandoned bodies in major newspapers as well as television channels, to photograph or video record the last rites of such bodies and to store or preserve the ashes and articles of clothing of such bodies for a reasonable period of time.

Apart from that, Pursotam has also sought laying down of guidelines which would mandate investigating of criminal complaints, especially those concerning threats to life, in a time-bound and periodically informing the complainants about the status of the probe.