The Vashi police on Monday found that the body of the 29-year-old migrant from West Bengal, which had gone missing from the morgue at the Vashi general hospital, was allegedly mixed up with that of an 18-year-old girl from Digha.
The girl, Kajal Suryawanshi, died of jaundice on May 4. Hospital authorities told her father they would get in touch after a COVID-19 test is done. “On May 14, they told us the test is negative and we can take the body. We did so and went directly to the crematorium. We opened the face cloth just once. The face looked a little different, but we thought it must be due to the 10-day gap,” Dashrath Suryawanshi, the father, said.
On Sunday evening, Mr. Suryawanshi said he got a call from the Vashi police, who sent him a photo, which he identified as his daughter. He was called to the police station on Monday. “I have been told that my daughter’s body is still lying in the morgue,” he said.
Meanwhile, the shocked relatives of Umar Farooque Shaikh are clueless as to what they can do now. “They say the body is gone. How do we pay our last respects now? The NRI police had taken the body to the morgue, it was their responsibility to get it back,” Abdul Kareem, his cousin, said.
Deputy Commissioner of Police, Zone I, Pankaj Dahane, said, “It is the hospital’s internal matter. The hospital has started an internal inquiry. No FIR can be registered.”
Prashant Jawade, superintendent of the Vashi general hospital, did not respond to attempts to contact him.
