The bodies of COVID-19 patients cannot be kept lying for hours waiting to be cremated, the Bombay High Court said on Tuesday and asked the Maharashtra government and the BMC to inform it about the condition of crematoriums across the state and in Mumbai.
A division bench of Chief Justice Dipankar Datta and Justice G S Kulkarni said in several crematoriums there is a waiting period before bodies are cremated and relatives of the victims are forced to queue outside the crematoriums.
“The Maharashtra government and all other civic authorities will have to come up with some mechanism to address this issue. Bodies cannot be left lying like that for hours together. They are corpses,” the court said.
If there is a waiting period at a crematorium, the body should not be released from the hospital, the HC said.
Justice Kulkarni cited an incident in Maharashtra’s Beed district, where 22 bodies of COVID-19 victims were stuffed in an ambulance while being transported to the crematorium.
The court was hearing a bunch of public interest litigations, seeking directions pertaining to shortage of Remdesivir injections, oxygen supply, availability of beds and other issues.
Surjitt Sahani
