LAYYAH, July 19: The tehsil municipal administration has allegedly buried an unidentified body without following the Islamic injunctions. This was revealed during the exhumation of the grave for DNA test here on Thursday.

Reports said the Layyah city police had found the body of a young man from a minor last month. After the necessary formalities, they handed over the body to the TMA sanitation officials who buried it ‘temporarily’ in the graveyard of a housing colony after no one came to claim it.

Later, Muneer Husain, a resident of Karor, claimed that the body was of his son. Muneer had already got registered an FIR of his son’s murder with the Karor Lal Esan police station against the owner of a hotel where his son worked.

Muneer had moved an application in the court of area magistrate for the exhumation of the grave. It transpired during exhumation that the officials concerned had buried the body by digging three-foot deep earth and ignoring Islamic injunctions.

The area magistrate called the Layyah TMO and questioned him for negligence. The TMO apologised to the magistrate and assured him that it would not be repeated.

According to the local government ordinance 2000, the burial of an unclaimed body is the responsibility of the social welfare department or union council of the area from where the body is found.

TMO Abdul Majeed Haidrani admitted negligence by the sanitation officials. He said strict instructions had been issued to the sanitary inspector to make sure that no such incident happened again.

Sanitary inspector Ejaz Lodhara told Dawn upon contact that actually the body started decomposing and due to severe stinking no sanitary worker was willing to give proper Islamic burial.

The TMA claims Rs2,500 for each unclaimed body burial, says social worker Shahzad Gul who demands that the district nazim, the DCO and the Layyah tehsil nazim should order an inquiry to fix responsibility for the un-Islamic practice.