Deathly tale

Dec 30: Sher Singh, a patient at the prestigious Gokuldas Tejpal (GT) Hospital died in the early hours of Monday. For his relatives the real...

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Dec 30: Sher Singh, a patient at the prestigious Gokuldas Tejpal (GT) Hospital died in the early hours of Monday. For his relatives the reality of his death was starkly brought home when his body was taken for post-mortem to a car-shed.

The shed is a dark, windowless room made of corrugated asbestos sheets with a stank smell of blood and spirit matching the eerie atmosphere. It is equipped with a rusty operating table, a creaky fan and a leaky tap atop a dirty sink.

Another tap with an open mouth above the body is used to wash away the body fluids. A bucket which is dirtier than the sink contains the remains of hand gloves and cotton masks used by the attendants. A few tattered gowns on the muddy floor are supposedly the gowns to be used by the attendants.

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Once the body is wheeled into the shed and permission obtained from various official agencies like the police and the court, the sordid drama begins to unfold. If the attendant considers the light from the tubelight inadequate, he simply opens the door and continues with his work, ignoring the curious looks of the passers-by or those of horror from the relatives of the dead.

With the help of a few other attendants, he proceeds systematically to cut open the body before a doctor who prepares the report.

The relatives of Sher Singh, on whom the post-mortem was conducted today, simply shrugged off the whole episode.

“What can we do?” asked one of them. Singh had died today morning within twelve hours of being admitted to the hospital, which necessitated a postmortem.

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The report said that Singh, a chronic drinker, had suffered extensive damage to his lungs and liver.

The original mortuary of GT hospital was demolished over 20 years ago to make way for a 13-storeyed hospital complex.

The complex has been lying unused ever since due to various litigations and the mortuary has been shifted to a car shed.

Formerly the postmortems were done in the nearby Cama and Albless hospital. But sources claim that differences among the managements of the sister concerns had resulted in the shifting of the mortuary back to GT.

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The mortuary, which is placed between two main buildings of the hospital, suffers from lack of proper lighting, a tubelight being the only source. The shed has for its neighbours the ICCU on one side and the superintendent’s room on the other.

Authorities claimed the shed is being used only on a temporary basis. “The post-mortems are done in a clean atmosphere, and no diseases have been reported to have spread from the mortuary,” claims Dr D Dongaonkar, dean of JJ hospital, under whose supervision the hospital is run. “Basically it’s a government problem…it is upto them to sort it out,” said a doctor at the hospital.

The hospital complex which is lying unused boasts of a four-room mortuary equipped with an air-conditioned machine which can hold four bodies at a time. The mortuary was readied for transfer to the hospital twice last year but the plans fell through at the last moment. In the meantime, nearly eight ceiling fans and various other electrical appliances were stolen by miscreants.