Outrage over indecent disposal of bodies of Covid victims in Nellore

Naveen S Garewal

Tribune News Service

Hyderabad, July 10

Telugu Desam Party (TDP) president and former Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu on Friday condemned the incident of “inhuman disposal of bodies of Covid-19 victims” in a single pit.

The incident took place in Nellore where the municipal authorities dumped the bodies using an earthmover in a huge pit without performing any religious rites.

Naidu took to twitter after a video went viral showing municipal workers taking out dead bodies from an ambulance and throwing them on the front portion of a JCB. The JCB then lowered the bodies in a pit in River Penna.

Pained to see bodies of #Covid_19 patients in Nellore being disrespectfully thrown into a single pit using an Earthmover. This is happening time & again. @ysjagan Govt must offer an apology to the grieving families who wished for a respectful departure for their loved ones. pic.twitter.com/1y4TSG2brv

— N Chandrababu Naidu #StayHomeSaveLives (@ncbn) July 10, 2020

The former chief minister said, “Pained to see bodies of Covid_19 patients in Nellore being disrespectfully thrown into a single pit using an earthmover. This is happening time and again. @ysjagan government must offer an apology to the grieving families who wished for a respectful departure for their loved ones.”

After the former chief minister’s tweet, Nellore district collector M.V. Sheshagiri Babu has ordered a probe to be conducted by the Nellore Revenue Divisional Officer (RDO) Hussian Saheb. Hussain later confirmed that he was conducting an inquiry.

“This is the third such incident in the state in two weeks. On July 6, municipal authorities in Tirupati used a JCB excavator to lift the body of a COVID victim from an ambulance and dump it into a pit. Health workers pushed the body onto the excavator, which carried it to a pit and dumped the body in it,” a TDP official said.

Tirupati Municipal Commissioner P.S. Girisha said the bodies were disposed of as they were heavy and the municipal staff failed to cremate them. In a similar incident also took place in Palasa town of Srikakulam district on June 26 when the body of a COVID victim was shifted from his house to the cremation ground on a JCB excavator.

While the number of dead in Andhra Pradesh is rising, the state witnessed an all-time high of 1,608 new coronavirus cases in the past 24 hours. Yesterday the state had reported 1,555 new cases, while the previous to that the figure was 1,322 cases in 24-hour period. The total coronavirus cases have crossed touched 25,422 with the death toll now standing at 292.