A PIL has been filed in the Supreme Court seeking the constitution of a special investigating agency to investigate the deaths of 100 people whose bodies were found floating in the Ganga in Buxar, Bihar and Ghazipur District in Uttar Pradesh, and in Unnao, Uttar Pradesh. The PIL also wanted post-mortems conducted of the bodies after recovering them from where they were buried under the special investigation agency.
The PIL has been filed by one Pradeep Kumar Yadav and others through Advocate Sanjeev Malhotra.
According to the petition, 71 bodies have been fished out at Mahadev Ghat, Chausa, District Buxar, Bihar and more than 30 bodies were found in District Ghazipur, UP. The petitioner sought the intervention of the Apex Court to inquire and investigate the suspicious death of the poor citizens whose bodies were flushed inhumanly into the Ganga since no FIR has been registered by the authorities. It was alleged that no post-mortem was conducted. The administration /police has buried the bodies by preparing verbatim false post-mortem reports which is an eyewash and to show that investigation was conducted.
“It is clear and apparent that the person whose dead bodies floated has not died their natural death. The administration in order to hide /save face from the responsibility of such inhuman act has prepared false verbatim post-mortems without actually doing it,” alleged the petitioners.
The petitioners stated that they are aggrieved by the inaction of the authorities in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar over the floating bodies in the Ganga, the governments of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar have failed to provide adequate resources to cremate the bodies of Covid-19 patient. They have also not taken any action against the concerned authorities who are responsible for this and no one knows if the bodies are really of Covid-19 patients or murder victims thrown in the river.
The petitioners said the recovery of decomposed corpses from the Ganga is of serious concern since it is a source of water for many areas and if the bodies were infected by Covid, it might spread among villages in both states.
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The petition cited the judgment in Parmanand Katara, Advocate v. Union of India & Anr. [1995) 3 SCC 248 ] where the Apex Court has held that the right to dignity and fair treatment under Article 21 of the Constitution is not only available to a man during his life but also to his body after his death.