The Times of India 
Monday 24 November 1997 
By Lalit Kumar 
Ghaziabad

Ghaziabad may not be the region's safest district to live in. But, for
those unfortunate enough to die an unnatural death here, there could
be further bodily trouble before the autopsy and the last rites.

It has now been established that rodents like rats and mongoose have
been eating the flesh from bodies kept in the district hospital's
mortuary.

This was established following allegations that a young murder
victim's right eye had been removed at the district hospital in
September 1996. An inquiry by a doctor's committee, headed by the
hospital's chief medical superintendent, O.P.Mishra, has held the
man's ``upper and lower eyelids had been eaten away by rodents, making
it appear to his father his eyeball had probably been removed''.

In another case, where a young student died in mysterious
circumstances, at the JKG Happy School on September 18 this year, the
autopsy has revealed several wounds on the boy's genitals which were
not mentioned in the inquest report.  This, says Ghaziabad police
chief Daya Shankar Singh, ``could be because of rodents eating into
Salim's genitals at the mortuary''.

Doctors at the district hospital, whose doctors conduct all the
autopsies in the district, told this correspondent ``rodents
regularly'' nip at the bodies kept at the hospital
mortuary. ``Usually, it is portions of soft tissue like ear holes,
tips of the nose, eyelids and other parts.''

Asked if this did not affect the outcome of the autopsies, possibly
leading to difficulties in getting convictions, a senior doctor said,
``Post-mortem and ante-mortem injuries are easy to differentiate.''

Asked if this was so in all cases, he replied, ``There can be problems
when bodies have decomposed a bit.''

It seems that knowledge of rodents eating away parts of bodies at the
hospital mortuary is common. Police officers and doctors talk of it
openly. One of the latter rues, ``We do not have refrigeration, or
crates to keep bodies in.'' So, the bodies lie unprotected.

Dr Mishra is not vocal on the remedies. Meanwhile, the area around the
hospital mortuary, situated a few metres between the women's wards and
the hospital's residential quarters, is becoming almost a regular
garbage dump - ideal for a rodent habitat.