KARACHI, Jan 31 The exhausting search for Naimat Shah, a missing resident of Keamari, ended on July 27 last year, more than a month after his disappearance, when his family learnt that he had been buried as an unidentified body in the Mowach Goth graveyard, which is owned and managed by the Edhi Foundation.

Mr Shah was fatally injured in a traffic accident near Sohrab Goth, and the police handed his body to the Edhi Foundation after he was pronounced dead and his identity could not be ascertained.

Twenty-eight-year-old Naimat Shah was only one of the 2,980 unidentified people the Edhi Foundation buried in 2009. These bodies are handed to the Edhi Foundation in the absence of any mechanisms or procedures to trace the family links of unclaimed bodies at the city's hospitals. Significantly, 688 (23 per cent) of the 2,980 bodies were later identified by their next of kin last year, after they leafed through the picture album of buried persons kept at Edhi's morgue.

Though grieved by the tragic death of his youngest son, Mr Shah's father, Rahman Baba, is among the fortunate few who are able to achieve a sense of closure regarding the disappearance and death of their family members. The family wonders, however, if they would still be searching for young Naimat today if the country's largest charity did not provide such a service. They also expressed puzzlement at why the authorities do not design a formal system for the identification of unclaimed bodies.

“We didn't know what happened to our son,” recalls Rahman Baba. “We thought he was picked up by the police, who sent him to jail. Our minds stopped working when someone in the family suggested visiting the Edhi morgue at Sohrab Goth, where finally the search came to an end.”

Though his experience was filled with grief and fear, he lauds the work of the charity and blesses them for providing the service of performing the burial rites for unclaimed bodies and providing for their identification. He also said he found the government “missing” when it came to extending any help to families such as his.

Police, Nadra project

not implemented While the police have been implementing a range of projects costing billions of rupees, ranging from an e-Policing programme to a Forensic Training School, they have so far completely ignored the issue of unidentified bodies, which requires no more complicated a system than a mechanism whereby the fingerprints of the body are taken soon after finding it and matched against a Nadra (National Database and Registration Authority) database.

The authorities recognise that it only takes a few seconds to determine the family links of any individual who is registered with Nadra, but say that a lack of response has resulted in the project being still-born.

“In recent correspondence with Nadra, we put this idea forward and requested access to their database for that particular project,” says DIG Investigations Ghulam Qadir Thebo. “But unfortunately they never responded and the idea died out with the passage of time. But definitely in this age, with all such facilities, it's the simplest part of the investigation to determine anybody's identity or trace their family links.”

Edhi stepping in

Since no other system exists, the Edhi Foundation buries every unclaimed dead body after keeping it for three days at the morgue in Sohrab Goth. A photograph is also taken of the deceased for record. On average, the Mowach Goth graveyard receives more than eight unidentified bodies daily.

“In 2008, we buried a total of 3,110 unclaimed dead bodies, which included people who were murdered,” says Anwar Kazmi, the administrator of the Edhi Foundation. “Among them, a total of 980 (31.5 per cent) were later identified by their families, who recognised their photographs. We don't have any alternative method to establish their identities.”

He said the charity reached an agreement with Nadra more than a year ago to trace the family links of unclaimed bodies after obtaining their fingerprints, but this never actually happened due to a lack of training on the part of Edhi staff.

“But we have started working on the project again and hope we'll get the desired results in the next few months. Currently, photos of the buried persons in our records are the only source of information to establish the identities of the unclaimed bodies, which in several cases may be scarred or damaged beyond recognition,” he said.

The number of people identified using the photographs remains a small proportion of the total, given the lack of a technology-based mechanism.

“In the Mowach Goth graveyard, you would find serial numbers on each grave instead of the name of the deceased,” says Rahman Baba, Naimat Shah's father. “My son is among the fortunate few, who was finally given an identity, but there are hundreds of sons, fathers or other loved ones from different families whose graves may always remain unnamed.”