PARIS, Sept 2: Paris city authorities say they will be forced to bury in paupers’ graves the bodies of 75 older people who died as a result of last month’s record heat wave, for the corpses, in spite of persistent efforts to find next of kin, have gone unclaimed.

A spokesman for the City of Paris admitted that some of the cadavers went unclaimed for the simple reason that family members who were located “simply didn’t want to have to put up 500 euros that it would have cost them to claim the corpses and accord them a proper burial.”