Gujarat: Recovered from canal, decomposed body taken to hospital in garbage van; video goes viral

Mehsana: A video has gone viral showing a garbage collection van of a municipality in Gujarat's Mehsana district transporting a body to a local hospital for post-mortem.

After people raised objections, officials of the Kadi Municipality said the decision to send a garbage van to transport the body was taken by lower rank employees because the municipality does not have any mortuary van at present.

The incident occurred on December 29 after the body was recovered from a canal outside the city limits and since it was highly decomposed, nobody was ready to take it to the hospital, they said.

In the brief video shot at night by a person travelling in another vehicle, a garbage collection van of Kadi Municipality can be seen transporting the body from a place near Narmada canal to the Community Health Centre near Kadi town.

Chief Officer of Kadi Municipality, Sandip Patel, said the incident took place on Sunday night outside the limits of the civic body.

"Police recovered a decomposed dead body from Narmada canal passing from a village situated outside the limits of our civic body on December 29. When police officials asked our staff to send a mortuary van to help them in sending the body till CHC for post mortem, our staff told police that the van has recently been scrapped due to RTO rules," he said.

"But since the body was badly decomposed, no other vehicle owner expressed willingness to do the work. Thus, after repeated requests from the police to arrange any other vehicle to do the task, our lower rank staff, without asking senior officials, sent a garbage van. The van was totally empty and did not have any garbage in it," the officer said.

The municipality has already started the process to buy a new mortuary van, he said.