Doctor arrested for selling corpses

LUCKNOW - Three government hospital staffers, including a doctor, were arrested in Moradabad district of Uttar Pradesh for selling unclaimed corpses to private medical colleges, police said Thursday.

“Preliminary investigations indicate that the three were selling unclaimed bodies to medical colleges, which use them for carrying out experiments,” deputy superintendent of police Manoj Pandey told reporters in Meerut.

Dr. Pankaj Giri, pharmacist Hari Singh and his helper Anand Kumar, who worked in the Central Police Hospital in Moradabad, some 350 km from Lucknow, were arrested late Wednesday by a team led by deputy inspector general of police Ashok Kumar Singh. The hospital is governed by the office of the district’s chief medical officer (CMO).

“Our team raided the Civil Lines Postmortem House and came across two bodies tied to each other and kept in a separate room,” he added.

According to police inspector Anil Kumar Raghav, the bodies did not have a single cut on them, and the post-mortem certificate attached was fake.

The Civil Lines Postmortem House comes under the jurisdiction of the Moradabad District Hospital.

The two bodies were found Monday near the Moradabad railway station, and sent to the Postmortem House. Unclaimed bodies from all over the district are brought here, and doctors and staff of the Central Police Hospital too can access the facilities.

A case under multiple sections of the Indian Penal Code has been registered against the three, Raghav said.

“We cannot rule out the possibility of the involvement of other health department officials,” he added.

Police, however, are mum on financial details of the racket, saying that investigations are in progress.

Meanwhile, Moradabad CMO R.K. Saxena told IANS that the pharmacist and his helper have been suspended, and that he had written a letter to the state government recommending Dr. Giri’s removal.

“Since the doctor is a class 1 gazetted officer, he can be suspended only after state government orders,” he said.