Anadi Tewari
A Public Interest Litigation has been moved before the Supreme Court seeking judicial intervention and directions for setting up a Special Investigating Agency (SIT) to supervise the probe into around 100 dead bodies found floating in the river Ganga in Bihar’s Buxar and Uttar Pradesh’s Unnao and Ghazipur districts.
The petition has prayed the Court to direct the respondent (concerned) authorities to conduct proper postmortems of the dead bodies which were found floating in the river Ganga in Bihar’s Buxar district and Uttar Pradesh’s Unnao and Ghazipur districts respectively.
The plea moved by Advocates Pradeep Yadav and Vishal Thakre has sought the intervention of the top court to inquire into the deaths of these 100 corpses found in river Ganga and also why no FIR was registered by the concerned authorities.
The petitioners have further urged before the Court that floating (some decomposed) corpses from the river Ganga raises serious concern as the river water is the freshwater source for many people in the areas and if the bodies were infected by COVID-19, then it might spread among the villages in both the states because of contaminated water.
“The states till now have not taken any single effective step towards the purification of water, which has become contaminated due to these decomposed corpses floating in it and both the states are not fulfilling their responsibility of providing clean water to their natives and thus, violated Article 21 of the Constitution of India,” the plea stated.
“The act of the states is inhuman as the states have failed to provide facilities for decent burial or cremation of dead bodies and have also failed to keep a check that the holy river, Ganga should not have been polluted by such an inhumane and indecent act either of an individual or of states itself,” the petition further adds.
The plea further went on to allege that the states have failed to keep a check on its crematoriums wherein nowadays there is a huge hike in the prices for cremating a dead body according to the rituals as the people managing the crematoriums have taken deaths as an opportunity to earn huge profits and the states have failed to fix any price for cremating dead bodies.
The petition has further relied upon the Supreme Court’s judgment in Parmanand Katara v. Union of India [(1989) 4 SCC 286] where the Court has held that the right to fair treatment and dignity under Article 21 is not only available to human but also to dead bodies.
“The present case, where around 100 dead bodies are found in river Ganga may be a case, whereby people illegally dealing in organ transplantation have brutally murdered these people after removing their internal organs and thereafter in the name of COVID, they have dumped the dead bodies in the river after wrapping them in plastic bags, the petition claimed.
The plea further alleged that no proper postmortem of the bodies are conducted authorities have merely made false post-mortem reports which are only an eyewash and trying to depict that investigation has been conducted.
“It is clear and apparent that the person whose dead bodies floated has not died a natural death. The administration in order to hide /save their face from the responsibility of such inhuman act has prepared false verbatim post mortem without actually doing the post mortem of dead bodies,” the plea said.
The petitioner has further prayed the Supreme Court to direct the concerned authorities to conduct a proper postmortem and identify the correct cause of death and report.
Background of the Issue
As per news reports, at least 96 unidentified bodies while many of them decomposed and bloated, have been found floating in the Ganga over the past couple of days. While 71 of the bodies have been fished out in Bihar’s Buxar district, at least 25 bodies were found in neighbouring Uttar Pradesh’s Ghazipur district.
Authorities in both the districts are yet to confirm if the dead bodies found are of COVID-19 infected people since samples are sent to labs to identify this scenario.