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| The Dead of Delhi, Unknown and Uncl |
| The Dead of Delhi, Unknown and Unclaimed
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| INDIA
, 7-November-2014
6:47:19 AM |
| The most lost of the lost people of Delhi end up here, in a cold metal-sided room at the Sabzi Mandi mortuary. They are lying on every available surface, including the blood-smeared floor, some with body parts flung out in the position of their death, protruding from the white plastic bags that are used to store them.
The smooth, sharp curve of a man's naked hip, all bone and no flesh. A jaw, with teeth. Hands folded over an abdomen as if at rest, or extended in some last intercepted expression of feeling.
In a corner, the bodies are crowded together on the floor. The mortuary attendants say it is so difficult to procure supplies as basic as disinfectant from the government that workers bring soap from home so that they can wash their hands after handling the bodies, many of which are infected with tuberculosis. So it would be unrealistic for the unidentified dead to expect a metal shelf of their own.
"You'll find them one on top of the other," said the mortuary's chief doctor, L.C. Gupta. "Where are we supposed to put them?"
On average, the police in this city register the discovery of more than 3,000 unidentifiable bodies a year - unidentifiable not because they are unrecognizable but because they carry no documents and there is no one who knows them.
It is an extraordinary number. New York City buries as many as 1,500 homeless or poor people in trenches in its potter's field on Hart Island every year, but of those, according to an official from the medical examiner's office who recently spoke to the NY1 news channel, the number who remain unidentified averages around 50.
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