With more than 100 bodies of the Balasore train accident victims yet to be identified and decomposition setting in, experts have been engaged from outside Odisha to embalm the bodies to preserve them for more days. More than 12 anatomy and forensic experts from AIIMS, Nagpur and Raipur have been engaged in the process. For the bodies that are being claimed, the Railways, in a marked departure from convention, has decided to assign an official as a helping hand for each of the victims’ families. Their job will be to assist the bereaved families all the way till cremation, coordinating with railway systems and state authorities, top sources told The Indian Express. In addition, if and when the victims’ families desire to immerse the remains in the river, Railways will extend help in that too. A Senior Administrative Grade-level officer of the East Coast Railway has been entrusted with organising this exercise of “victim mapping”, a top source said. “The families have suffered an irreplaceable loss. We want to help them in every way we can,” the official said. Prabhas Ranjan Tripathy, a faculty in the anatomy department at AIIMS Bhubaneswar, said the embalming process is generally done soon after the death. But in this case, since the accident site was not equipped to handle such a casualty figure, the bodies were first kept in a local school before being shifted to Bhubaneswar. “At AIIMS, we received 123 bodies, of which only 43 have been handed over to their families so far,” Tripathy told The Indian Express. AIIMS executive director Ashutosh Biswas said they have brought five special containers from Paradip Ports, where bodies will be kept for multiple days after embalming. Identification is also a challenge as officials are grappling with cases of multiple people claiming the same body, given that many are barely recognisable. Meanwhile, trying to identify the bodies which remain unclaimed, Railways used face recognition technology and dipped into the telecom database— Ashwin Vaishnaw is also the telecom minister. The faces of the victims were matched with the profiles linked to their mobile numbers, said sources. Officials said that about 40 victims were identified in this manner. Their Aadhaar numbers were tracked through the KYC data, and their families were then informed. Among those struggling to find the body of their loved ones is Ranjit Mondal from Kolkata. He looked at a board outside the AIIMS mortuary displaying photos of bodies so he could recognise his son Dipankar, who along with his friend Akshaya Mistry had boarded the Coromandel Express for a trip to Chennai. “I have no hope they are alive. But we want to at least see his body one last time. We have searched in various hospitals in Balasore, Bhadrak and Cuttack. At last, we have arrived here at the morgue,” Ranjit told The Indian Express. Gyanchand Mahato from Sahibganj in Jharkhand looked for his brother Sonu Kumar Mahato, who was returning from Bengaluru where he worked as a construction worker. Jenima Mondal came from Bardhaman in West Bengal as she was not able to contact her son Manjur Ali Mondal, who was going to Chennai to work in a construction firm. At the AIIMS morgue, she found his body. Chief Secretary P K Jena said 85 bodies were identified in Balasore and another 85 were identified in Bhubaneswar, which are being handed over to friends and relatives after due process. “The state government makes arrangements for transportation of bodies till the final destination. For legal documents, the family members don’t need to run pillar to post and the state government will take steps to process it and to send it to them electronically and via posts,” said Jena. Railways sources also said they have deputed officials at the AIIMS mortuary. They are helping authorities match victims with their Aadhaar and other identification papers. From AIIMS, the mortal remains will be carried anywhere the families desire, and the attached official will travel with them. The station and divisional officials along the route have been instructed to extend help to the families and make sure that they do not face any inconvenience. “The officer given the responsibility to oversee this is senior and also has years of experience in people-facing roles,” a top Railways source said. The Railways has also been proactive in starting disbursal of ex-gratia amount to the victims’ families. From six locations, around Rs 3.2 crore in compensation amount had already been disbursed by Sunday.
