Odisha: Woman's crumpled dead body carried on bamboo stick in Balasore as no ambulance was available

A day after a man from Kalahandi district was seen carrying his wife’s corpse on his shoulder, another shocking video has surfaced from Odisha’s Balasore. The new video shows a hospital worker breaking the bones of a dead body with his foot in order to make it a compact bundle. Two other workers are then seen stuffing the body into a plastic bag. They sling it on a bamboo stick and carry it through the streets.

A 76-year-old widow named Salamani Barik died after she was run over by a train on Wednesday. Her body was kept for hours at a community health centre in Soro town in Balasore district.

Since there were no post-mortem facilities in Soro, her body had to be sent to a hospital in the district headquarter. Because of the unavailability of any ambulance, the railway police decided that the body would be sent by train.

As the auto was expensive the police allegedly asked a sweeper to make arrangements to take the body to the station. The body had become stiff, so the workers broke its bones at the hip. The body stuffed in a plastic bag was carried on a bamboo pole for 2 km to the railway station.

"They carried my mother in a broken condition. I am helpless to do anything. I pray to the authorities for justice," said the woman's son Rabindra Barik. An explanation has been sought from the railway police and the Balasore district authorities by the Odisha Human Rights Commission.

In another incident, Anang Majhi, wife of Dana Majhi, a tribal resident of Melaghara village under Thuamul-Rampur Block in Kalahandi district, had died of TB at Bhawanipatna district headquarters hospital on the night of August 23. Unable to get any help from the hospital authorities, Majhi had to carry his wife’s body on his shoulder and walked 10 kilometres.