Unnao(UP): A committee tasked with probing the discovery of 100 skeletons in a room in police lines here submitted its reports to the Uttar Pradesh government hours after it was set up yesterday.
“The committee has submitted its report to the District Magistrate as well as the state government,” Superintendent of Police M P Singh said, adding that further action would be taken in accordance with the instructions from the government. City Magistrate Heera Lal Yadav said the report was submitted late last night.
The committee, which included experts, started probe amid the administration's acceptance of a lapse yesterday. DIG (Lucknow range) R K Chaturvedi, District Magistrate Unnao Soumya Agarwal and Chief Medical Officer of the district Geeta Yadav had inspected the spot during which 47 sacks carrying human bones and 74 jars containing viscera were found from a room in the police lines complex.
Three former employees told that autopsy was done in that room till 1993 and viscera was being preserved till 2008. Of the 74 jars in which viscera was preserved, 58 had labels on them.
The oldest was of 1980 and the latest was labelled in 2007. All the 47 sacks stuffed with human bones were labelled, he said. Chaturvedi admitted there was lapse at some point. “There was some lapse. In 2009 such remains were found outside post mortem houses at four or five places, including Etah and Aligarh. After that, a policy was formulated,” he said.
The recovery of skeletons from the police lines' room sent the UP police into tizzy. IG (Law and Order) A Satish Ganesh said that according to local authorities, the room was used for conducting post mortem examination before 2008 and there was a register in which the record of bodies was maintained. The matter came to the light when some painters, working inside the Reserve Police Lines premises, curiously peeped into the room through an open window and saw human remains piled up in huge number.
They immediately alerted the police.No one initially dared to enter the room from which an unbearable stench emanated. It was only with the help of some class IV civic employees, arranged by the Unnao police, that investigators entered the room and the remains were taken to the district hospital mortuary.
The room was meant for storing viscera samples and other human remains like unidentified mutilated bodies which were sent for post mortem and had to be preserved for further action on the basis of court orders, an official said. Shocking visuals of the skeletons went viral in the media as the matter came to the fore hardly within a fortnight after recovery of 104 bodies near Parihar ghat in Safipur in the district.
The matter also acquired a political hue with opposition parties suspecting a foul play and blaming the Samajwadi Party government.BJP spokesman Vijay Bahadur Pathak said, “First bodies were recovered from the Ganga river and now skeletons have been found in police lines. The state government is clueless and insensitive.”
Congress MLA Akhilesh Pratap Singh asked the Akhilesh Yadav government to clarify as to how such a thing happened. “It should ensure that such incidents do not recur,” he added.
