Shocking! Hundreds of dead bodies go missing from Hyderabad hospitals

Hundreds of dead bodies have 'gone missing' from Hyderabad's two top state-run hospitals in the recent months, an RTI query has revealed.

Hyderabad: As many as 117 dead bodies have 'gone missing' from Hyderabad's two top state-run hospitals in the recent months, suggesting large scale illegal trafficking of human bodies, an RTI query has revealed.

As per a report published in ToI, city's two top hospitals - Osmania General Hospital and Gandhi Hospital - are under scanner in this regard. The shocking finding points to the active involvement of 'mafia' carrying out illegal trafficking of human bodies.

The RTI query, filed by NGO Satya Harishchandra Foundation, has revealed that as many as 117 of such patients after being admitted as Medico-Legal Cases from Osmania General Hospital and Gandhi Hospital between January 1, 2015 and August 15, 2015 have 'gone missing' or vanished.

There is a profitable market for selling dead bodies in various parts of the country and in the Hyderabad city too  some private medical colleges seem willing to shell out Rs 3 lakh to Rs 15 lakh for each body, depending on the gender.

Members of Loksatta Party and NGO Satya Harishchandra foundation have repeatedly pressed for a CBI inquiry into the mysterious disappearance of bodies during the last 10 years from those two hospitals.

Addressing a press conference earlier, Sreenivas Moorthy of Loksatta Party claimed that Osmania Hospital has 120-odd security persons working in shifts, and a government decision on a proposal to install around 70 CCTV cameras has been long due and it reveals a sinister plan since it is impossible for a patient to go absconding.

With no claimants, these patients vanish into thin air, leaving no clue about their whereabouts with the hospital staff or security guards.

All this starts when an old, infirm, destitute or a badly-injured victim of a road accident is shifted to the hospital in an unconscious condition by a home guard or constable. A medico-legal case (MLC) is duly registered at the local police station. Ironically, these patients - most of them on their last leg and registered as 'unknown' in medical records – mysteriously go 'absconding'.

In their reply to the RTI query, the authorities at Osmania General Hospital (OGH) and Gandhi Hospital said so, putting the number of such 'missing' patients at 117 since January.

Health activists K Rajeshwar Rao and Sreenivaas Moorthy allege that these 'unknown' patients, in reality, die and as cadavers are trafficked out from hospital mortuaries by a mafia.

"There is a need to order a high level probe to unearth the mafia dealing in trafficking of human bodies from state hospitals. People on the verge of death cannot just vanish into thin air as is being claimed by the hospital authorities," Rajeshwar Rao was quoted as saying.