Odisha shocker: No ambulance, staff break bones of woman's dead body to carry it on a sling

Pic courtsey: ANI

Balasore: After a tribal man's 10-km walk with his wife's body on his shoulder drew widespread flak, another horrifying incident from Odisha has come to the fore.

According to a report, an old woman while crossing a railway track after alighting from a train at Bahanaga railway station was suddenly knocked down by a goods train passing on the same track.

Although she was right away taken to a hospital at Soro in Balasore district in an ambulance, the woman was declared dead by the doctor.

Despite the fact that the railway police was well aware of the incident, two of their personnel reached the hospital after a delay of 12 hours to take the body of Salamani Barik, a 76-year-old widow, to Balasore, it said.

Since rigor mortis had developed, those two police personnel in order to put the body inside a sack allegedly broke its limbs by climbing over the body and finally carried it all the way from the hospital to Soro railway station on their shoulders by tying it to a bamboo pole amid the full view of the public.

The Odisha Human Rights Commission has asked the district collector of Balasore and Inspector General of Railway Police to enquire into the incident.

The rights panel's acting chairperson Justice BK Mishra took up the matter suo motu basing on the news reports.

Justice Mishra in the order asked IG of Police, Railways, Cuttack as well as Collector, Balasore to cause an enquiry into the matter and furnish their report to the Commission within four weeks hence.

Earlier, a video showing a tribal man walking 10 km carrying his wife's body on his shoulder from a government hospital in Kalahandi district as he failed to get a mortuary van or an ambulance from the hospital authorities had shamed Odisha. The moving images of his trudge on TV channels had caused outrage across the country.