Hours after a car bomb ripped through Mumbai's Zaveri Market, Sabir Nirban began the long process of trying to claim his friend's body. It would require a dozen signatures and much patience.
"One [official] was on the ground floor, one was on the sixth. They were unavailable or busy. They said `come after 10 minutes, come after 20 minutes,'" Nirban said.
When disaster strikes in India -- as it did Monday with twin bombings in Mumbai, killing at least 50 people and injuring many more -- the grieving must face not just the aftermath of the tragedy, but the nightmare of India's notorious bureaucracy.
Invariably, there are endless forms to be signed, officials to be met and protocols to be followed to the fury-inducing letter.
"The clerks and intern doctors were harassing us. They kept insisting on a post-mortem and they kept insisting on signatures," said Nirban, a local YMCA official who was trying to retrieve the body of his friend Sadique Ahmed and ready it for the speedy burial their Muslim faith requires.
Ahmed, 42, was at his store in the market selling slippers when a taxi parked a few meters away blew up. When it exploded, he was killed by flying shards of metal and wood, as was his 21-year-old nephew and assistant, Mohammed Sohail Latif Wadiwala.
Those injured in such incidents often face a bureaucratic struggle as well. Victims of terrorist attacks and other tragedies are invariably taken to government hospitals, and are allowed to leave only with official permission.
But since government hospitals often have less funding, supplies and personnel than private hospitals, that can mean trouble for anyone looking other treatment.
Faqr Jamil Qadir, a 19-year-old Yemeni tourist, was hit in the abdomen by a shard from the other blast, at Mumbai's British-era Gateway of India.
Like the other wounded people, he was brought to a government-run hospital. His father, Jamil Abdul Qadir, wanted to take him to a better private hospital. But Chhagan Bhujbal, the state's deputy chief minister, refused to let him go.
Finally, after many hours of frustration, the state's top elected official, Sushil Kumar Shinde, ordered doctors not to stop the injured from leaving, and said bodies need not be kept for autopsies.
But those waiting for Ahmed's body still had to wait some more.
At his home on Mohammad Ali Road, mourners waited for hours in the narrow lane of car garages and meat shops. The men sat in silence, wearing skull caps and flowing white shirts and long pants, as women wailed inside.
In the hospital, the relatives were pacing corridors, climbing stairs and pleading and arguing with doctors, administrators and police officials to sign all the paperwork.
After many hours, the long battle with paperwork ended. And finally, as prayers were read, the bodies of Ahmed and Wadiwala, the uncle and nephew, were lowered in coffins into the ground.
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