LAHORE: While they are spending millions of rupees on the purchase of luxury vehicles for bureaucrats, three state organisations are showing reluctance to pay a petty amount of ‘Rs200’ each for the identification of unclaimed bodies to help families reach them to perform their last rituals.

The National Database and Registration Authority (Nadra) and Punjab home and health departments are shifting the burden to each other to allocate the funds to bear the cost/expenses under the head of “identification of unknown/unattended bodies and patients”.

A couple of days back, unknown bodies were found on the roof of Nishtar Medical University in Multan.

The Lahore High Court had two years ago directed the three institutes to sign a memorandum of understanding (MoU) for “biometric fingerprints of unknown dead bodies/unattended/unidentified patients/drug addicts in 26 government district headquarters hospitals, 115 tehsil headquarters and 44 teaching hospitals of Punjab”.

Punjab home and health departments, Nadra yet to comply with LHC order

In the much-needed scheme, only Rs200 was required to pay for ‘biometric verification service’ of each unclaimed/unknown body or patient, reporting in the major state-run hospitals of Punjab.

Unfortunately, the scheme has been pending for the last two years or so as no one was ready to implement it in compliance with the LHC orders.

On the other hand, the Standing Committee of Cabinet on Finance and Development on Sept 10 approved a summary put up after the nod of the chief minister that the Punjab government would purchase 40 new vehicles for the CM House and cabinet members at a cost of Rs300 million.

An official privy to the development told Dawn that Mayo Hospital Lahore alone was receiving nearly 40 to 50 unclaimed bodies every month other than unknown patients in its heavily-burdened accident & emergency department.

Similarly, he said, Jinnah Hospital Lahore, Lahore General Hospital and those housing mortuaries were also receiving ‘unclaimed bodies’ and unknown patients every day.

In the decades-old system, the blatant human rights violations were going unnoticed as the unknown bodies were either buried in the local graveyards or sold to medical institutions for experiments.

For this, the official said, local police used to perform brief legal formalities to ‘dispose of’ the bodies labeled as ‘unknown bodies’ without identification process.

This unethical practice has been unfolding many painful tales for the families when they managed to trace their loved ones in ‘unknown graves’ of the city, most of them in Shehr-i-Khamoshan.

The official said Dr Salman Kazmi of Mayo Hospital had moved the Lahore High Court in 2020, filed a petition through a senior lawyer, Azhar Siddique, seeking a directive for the Punjab government to declare mandatory the biometric verification of every unclaimed body and unknown patient.

The LHC later issued directives for the state institutions, including Nadra and the Punjab home and health departments, to sign an MoU to materialise the scheme.

Since then, the stakeholders concerned held several official meetings, but no compliance was ensured on the LHC directives, as the matter was restricted “only” to the official correspondence between these government departments.

Through the last letter written by the Punjab health secretary to Nadra’s Operation Registration Wing Director Qasim Rizvi on July 18 this year, the former conveyed that the human and other resources were available at the public sector hospitals of Punjab for the biometric identification of the unclaimed bodies and patients.

In response, Nadra Islamabad had on Aug 10 told the health department that the organisation would charge Rs200 per case for the biometric verification service.

Published in Dawn, October 17th, 2022