A forensic team has submitted a report on the gruesome discovery of dozens of bones and decayed body parts found in a police building in northern India, police said yesterday.
Police in India’s northern Uttar Pradesh state said the human remains, discovered on Friday, had apparently been left there after autopsies and had been stored in a postmortem room that was locked since 2008.
“Sacks of bones and jars of [decaying] organs were found on Friday. The room had not been used in over six years, but some workers spotted them through an open window,” senior police official G.N. Soni told reporters by telephone from Unnao district.
“The expert committee has already submitted its report to the district magistrate,” Soni added.
Soni said he did not know where the bodies came from or why they were never cremated, but police have reportedly admitted a lapse in normal procedures for the disposal of bodies after postmortems.
Authorities will now conduct DNA tests and investigate why “100 bones and skulls” — some which date back to the early 1980s — “were left to rot in the room,” another district police official, who did not wished to be named, told reporters.
Dozens of other skeletons and decayed body parts have similarly been discovered in other parts of Uttar Pradesh, The Times of India and Mail Today newspapers reported yesterday. The latest incidents come just weeks after about 100 bodies were found floating in India’s River Ganges near a cremation area in Unnao.
Police said the bodies were probably given river burials by families too poor to afford enough wood and other materials for a proper cremation.
Millions of India’s Hindus practice open-air cremation, with the ashes of loves ones scattered in the revered Ganges.
While Hindus cremate their loved ones, the country’s Muslim and Christian minorities usually choose burial, as they believe there will be a physical resurrection on the Day of Judgement.
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