Odishatv Bureau

Bhubaneswar: As Bhubaneswar basks in the glory of being named as the most eligible candidate for the Smart City tag, the city on Sunday exhibited a side that takes it ages back. In an utterly shocking sight which is more than a blemish on ‘Smart Bhubaneswar,’ a human corpse was seen being carried to the crematorium on the back of a trolley rickshaw.

The fact that this is not an one off incident and happens regularly in the full knowledge of Bhubaneswar Municipality Corporation (BMC) makes it even more deplorable.

After post mortem, unidentified and unclaimed bodies are sent for disposal by the respective police stations in this manner on a regular basis.

“It is a very unsavory sight to see dead bodies being carried on public roads in this fashion and makes human life seem akin to animals. The administration should at least make a provision for a vehicle to carry the bodies,” said a Bhubaneswar citizen.

“We will see to it that proper care is taken to ensure that the corpses are transported in a proper manner and cremated. We will make use of a transport vehicle that we have and will also ask the government to allocate more funds for a proper cremation process of unclaimed dead bodies,” said Bhubaneswar Mayor, Anant Narayan Jena.

“Bodies that remain unclaimed after four to five days of postmortem are sent to be disposed of by the police. We do it regularly in this fashion and we have not been provided any vehicle,” said the rickshaw puller on duty, with a towel wrapped on his face: one fails to understand what he is trying to save himself from – the sun, the shame or the stink!

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