RTI reveals cops' neglect over dead bodies

Swati Vashishtha , CNN-IBN
Posted on Mar 30, 2010 at 00:22 | Updated Mar 30, 2010 at 01:27

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Jaipur: A year after Rajasthan’s Ganganagar police allegedly sold off the body of his 19-year-old son to a medical college, Rajkumar Soni is still fighting for justice.

However, a Right to Information (RTI) application he filed has exposed big irregularities in how police here deal with unidentified bodies.

Rajkumar Soni said, “If the police had cooperated the body could have been identified but they gave no notification in the newspaper...they have been running this racket for a while.”

Soni's son Rahul had died on May 26 last year under mysterious circumstances.

The same day the police gave away the body to a local private medical college for research without notifying in any newspapers or making any other efforts to identify the body as per the law.

“They first said they'd cremated my son's body then they said they'd given the body to the medical college for experiments to be conducted, they did not give notification in the newspapers,” said Soni.

Meanwhile, the local MLA who raised the matter in the state assembly alleges the Ganganagar police are giving away these bodies illegally for money.

Ganganagar MLA Radheyshyam said, “There are bodies that come from the canal…they are sold like this, at least thirty such cases are registered, 25 officials are being questioned but nothing has changed.”

Six months back, Soni lodged an FIR against the Superintendent of Police (SP) and the co-administrator of the medical college among others but the investigation has since been handed over to a subordinate police official.

CNN IBN has learnt that the Ganganagar police are probing irregularities in dealing with unidentified bodies in at least 15 cases. But despite repeated efforts by CNN-IBN, the SP of Ganganagar refused to comment on the status of the probe into this shocking case.

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