The Supreme Court on Wednesday dismissed a plea which had sought a direction to the Centre to formulate a national mortal remains management and disposal protocol for pandemic and non-pandemic times to be implemented across the country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The plea was filed by a Delhi-based man who had said that body of his mother was mistaken for some other COVID-19 victim and was handed over to another person due to the negligence of a hospital here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The petitioner said that he was denied the sacred right of doing the last rites of his mother, who was not a COVID-19 positive patient, due to the callous action of the hospital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The plea came up for hearing before a bench comprising Justices Ashok Bhushan and R S Reddy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
You can intervene in the suo motu matter. You can file proper intervention application. These issues are being taken up in the suo motu PIL. Why should we hear a fresh petition, the bench told advocate Manoj V George, who was appearing for the petitioner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The top court had last year taken suo motu cognisance of reports of improper handling of COVID-19 patients and undignified disposal of victims’ bodies in the country. The suo motu case is titled as Proper Treatment of COVID-19 Patients and Dignified Handling of Dead Bodies in Hospitals etc’.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
George said this is not an adversarial petition .<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My (petitioner) mother’s body was swapped and I was denied the right of dignified burial to her. This can happen to anyone, he told the bench, which dismissed the plea.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Petitioner G Manohar had sought directions to all the states to formulate a state mortal remains management and disposal protocol for pandemic and non-pandemic times within a reasonable period.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The plea had said that states should be directed to designate the district medical officer to be the appropriate authority for implementation of this protocol.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The negligence of the respondent hospital is writ large inasmuch as to say that the respondent hospital was handing over a COVID-19 positive person’s body to the petitioner all the while knowing that the petitioner’s mother had not died of COVID-19, the plea said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
With no safety protocols in place and no proper labelling or procedure for safekeeping of bodies, the respondent hospital negligently handed over the body of the petitioner’s mother to a complete stranger, leaving the petitioner high and dry and insisting that the petitioner take the other body’ in complete disrespect to the memory of a human being, it said.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Supreme Court on Wednesday dismissed a plea which had sought a direction to the Centre to formulate a national mortal remains management and disposal protocol for pandemic and non-pandemic times to be implemented across the country. The plea was filed by a Delhi-based man who had said that body of his mother was mistaken for some other COVID-19 victim and was handed over to another person due to the negligence of a hospital here. The petitioner said that he was denied the sacred right of doing the last rites…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":29045,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[8,4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29429"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29429"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29429\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29430,"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29429\/revisions\/29430"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/29045"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29429"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29429"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29429"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}