A day after pictures of a man from Kalahandi carrying his wife’s dead body over his shoulders was reported widely, a similar incident occurred in Odisha’s Balasore district. After being run over by a goods train on Wednesday morning, 80-year-old Salamani Behera’s body was taken to the Soro Community Health Centre. The body had to be moved to the Balasore district hospital for the post-mortem, about 30 kilometers away; however, the Government Railway Police (GRP), which was responsible for transporting the body, failed to show up for nearly 12 hours. When they finally arrived, no ambulance was available to take the body to Balasore.

GRP Assistant Sub-Inspector from Soro, Pratap Rudra Mishra told the Indian Express that he asked an auto-rickshaw driver to take the body to a nearby railway station so that it could be transported to Balasore by train. The driver allegedly asked for Rs 3,500, while “we cannot spend more than Rs 1,000 for such purposes”, Mishra told IE. As a result, Grade IV workers of the Soro health centre were asked to carry the body by Mishra. Because of the delay, rigor mortis had set in; the workers had to break the body at the hip, wrap it in a sheet and tie it to a bamboo pole. The body was carried to the railway station 2 kilometres away, after which it was put on a train to Balasore.

Behera’s son was mulling over filing a complaint regarding the mistreatment of his mother’s body, but ultimately decided against it, saying “who would act on our complaint”. Meanwhile, the Odisha Human Rights Commission has issued notices to the Inspector General of GRP and Balasore district collector, demanding a probe into the incident.