A 60-year-old murder convict at Presidency jail, who had been admitted to SSKM Hospital for over a month, died last Friday (Sashthi).
When the family went to identify the dead man in the hospital’s morgue on Monday, the body was missing.
Late on Thursday, joint commissioner, crime, Calcutta police, Shankha Shubhra Chakrabarty, said Bablu Polley’s body had been mistakenly handed to another family.
Polley and the man whose family was handed the body died on October 20.
After it became known that Polley’s body was missing, the police contacted the families of all those whose bodies were released after post-mortem on October 21.
“Of all the bodies that were to be released on October 21, one was still at the hospital morgue. Polley’s body, which was officially not handed to his family, was missing. The family of the person whose body was still at the morgue was called. They said they had cremated the body handed to them without realising that it was someone else’s,” said an officer at Lalbazar.
Earlier in the day, Polley’s 18-year-old son, Chandan, said the body had been handed to some other family. The hospital then did not confirm Chandan’s statement.
SSKM director Manimoy Bandyopadhyay did not take calls or respond to text messages from this newspaper.
Health department sources said a five-member committee had been formed to investigate the matter.
Bablu Polley, from Amta in Howrah, had been convicted of murder in 2011. “My father had been in jail for over 12 years,” Chandan told Metro.
“My father died on October 20 (Sashthi). The next day, the local police gave us the news. As told, we went to the hospital on Navami to bring home the body,” said Chandan. “We were taken to the morgue and shown several bodies. My mother said none of the bodies was that of my father’s. It was apparent that something was wrong. But no one was telling us.”
Chandan said his family received a call around 5.30am on October 24 and told to visit SSKM again the same day.
The family went on October 25. “I was told that my father’s body had mistakenly been handed to someone else and was cremated,” Chandan said.
