Odisha Train Tragedy: By Saturday, the 23-year-old was looking for him in Balasore. She had hoped he would be among the injured for the first two days, but it was not to be.
Since then, she has travelled from the Balasore district hospital to the SCB Medical College in Cuttack to the AIIMS in Bhubaneswar, poring over photograph after photograph and body after body.
Krupa Devi hasn’t been able to locate her father, which is a sign of a growing problem for the Odisha government and the railways, which they are attempting to solve by using specific containers, embalming experts, and DNA testing.
“So many of the bodies are disfigured. The eyes are protruding, the faces are bloated, they all look the same. Someone get me my father,” a disconsolate Devi said.
On Sunday, aware that they were racing against time and decomposition, close to 100 bodies were sent to AIIMS Bhubaneswar for embalming, a process where formalin is injected into the arteries, normally intended to delay decomposition so the remains are suitable for a funeral, or to preserve the body in case the last rites have to be conducted a few days after death. Before the surgical embalming can begin, the body is washed in a disinfectant solution and the limbs are massaged and manipulated to relieve rigor mortis (stiffening of the joints and muscles).
On Friday evening, the Coromandel Express, which runs on one of India’s main rail lines from Shalimar in West Bengal to Chennai in Tamil Nadu, collided with a goods train, some of whose derailed compartments then struck the Yeshwantpur Howrah Express at the Bahanaga Bazar station, leaving 288 people dead and more than 1100 injured. 205 of the 288 have been located and are being returned to their families. The waiting just makes the grief of loss worse for the other 83, including Devi.
“Ideally, embalming should be done within 6-12 hours of death. If embalming is not done for more than 12 hours after death, its loses effectiveness and decomposition happens quickly. The accident happened during the summer so that has exacerbated the process. Also if the body is damaged, embalming is difficult. If the body is damaged, it is very difficult to embalm it,” said Dr Prabhas Ranjan Tripathy, professor of anatomy at AIIMS Bhubaneswar.
A group of medical professionals from Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital, Lady Hardinge Medical College, and AIIMS in Delhi arrived in Odisha on Monday to provide their expertise.
Decomposition was unavoidable, therefore the AIIMS authorities started DNA testing on Monday by obtaining blood samples from relatives to compare with DNA samples taken from the bodies to prevent discrepancies. This is crucial right now, according to officials, because there have been instances where bodies that were recognised by one family from a photograph were later discovered to have been removed by another.
According to a Jharkhand claimant, they had recognised Upendra Kumar Sharma’s body the day before, but it had been given to someone else. What use does DNA testing serve? We were able to identify Upendra because to a tattoo on his body, a relative stated.
According to a senior official of AIIMS, Bhubaneswar, up to 10 samples have so far been taken from the claimants.
According to state officials, the arrival of these distinctive containers from Paradip indicates they have purchased some time and would wait a few days before making a decision if some bodies have no claimants at all. “As per IPC, we can cremate the bodies after 96 hours if there are no claimants. A mass cremation is a last resort,” a senior official said.
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