Islamabad [Pakistan]: Pakistan’s Nishtar Medical University has held police and rescue officials responsible for the pile up of unclaimed dead bodies on the hospital’s roof, saying that the police do not take the bodies back on time and hence the medical facility is forced to keep the decaying bodies on the rooftop.
Accusing the officials, NMU Head of Anatomy Department Dr Mariam Ashraf stated that the bodies that the medical facility receives from police are usually decayed and they cannot be kept in the mortuary and are placed on the hospital rooftop, reported Geo TV. She also said that the influx of dead bodies was huge because the medical facility could not refuse to accept the bodies as it was bound to take them in as safekeeping.
This comes after at least 200 rotting corpses were found on the roof of a hospital in Pakistan’s Multan city on Friday while several media reports said that the bodies were recovered in dubious circumstances, indicating that those people are forcibly disappeared Baloch persons.
Following the incident, the Punjab government formed a six-member committee to investigate the matter, reported The Daily Times. She made these remarks during a TV program where she accused the rescue officials and police of the piling up of bodies in the morgue and on its roof.
“Police and rescue officials ask us to keep it in the hospital,” she said and added that the medical facility could not refuse to accept the bodies as it was bound to take them in as safekeeping, reported The Daily Times.
“The police and rescue officials do not take them back on time. We have written documents in which we have asked them to take the bodies. Since there is a lag, such things happen,” the official said.
“Edhi Foundation has not been picking up bodies from our hospital since they do not have burial space in their graveyard,” she added.
“The only reason for the bodies being kept on the roof is that their influx is huge and they aren’t returning back to the police stations in the numbers that they should,” she claimed.
However, the police and the Edhi foundation rejected the allegations. “We did not refuse Nishtar Hospital to bury the dead bodies; in fact, we contacted them today for the burial,” Edhi claimed.
Sohail Abro, Chairman of Jeay Sindh Freedom Movement (JSFM), a Sindhi nationalist party, has termed the recovery of dead bodies from Multan’s Nishtar Hospital roof in Pakistan’s Punjab province as a “great tragedy in human history.”
Pro-Baloch groups have voiced serious concern over the recovery of the dead bodies. In a statement, the Baloch National Movement (BNM) spokesperson said that the dead bodies discovered on the roof of Multan hospital and the condition of the dead bodies concern them.
The spokesperson said that the news went viral on social media with gruesome videos and pictures that around 500 unidentified mutilated bodies were found.
“Those who were thrown on the roof inhumanely, whose flesh was being eaten by vultures and crows. These bodies were identified by Tariq Gujjar, adviser to the Chief Minister of Punjab. Despite this, the Pakistani media has suppressed this news. It also shows this reality, that is why this news is being hidden in media,” the BNM spokesperson said.
“In this month, the bodies of 168 unidentified people were found in Punjab. Those who were declared unknown persons and buried,” the spokesperson added.
Balochistan Liberation Front (BLF) chief Allah Nazar Baloch described the recovery of hundreds of dead bodies as a huge tragedy and urged the UN and the human rights agencies to take urgent notice of the gruesome incident. (ANI)
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