With no ambulance available, 2 workers seen carrying crumpled dead body in Balasore.
A day after a man was seen walking with his wife's body slung over his shoulder, another horrifying video has emerged from Odisha. A hospital worker stands over a dead body, presses it down with his foot and breaks the bones to make it a compact bundle.
Two workers are next seen stuffing the broken body into a large plastic bag and slinging it on a bamboo stick before walking carrying it through the roads.
The body of Salamani Barik, a 76-year-old widow, lay for hours at a community health centre in Soro town in Balasore district after she was run over by a train on Wednesday.
There are no post-mortem facilities in Soro, so she had to be taken to a hospital in the district headquarters, 30 km away.
No ambulance was available - which has been exposed as a chronic problem in these districts that are among India's poorest - so the railway police decided that the body would be sent by train. When hiring an auto-rickshaw looked expensive, the police allegedly asked a sweeper to arrange for the body to be taken to the station. By then, Ms Barik's body had become stiff.
Apparently to make it easier to carry the body, workers broke its bones at the hip, trussed it up and strung it to a bamboo pole before walking 2 km to the railway station.
"They carried my mother in a broken condition. I am helpless to do anything. I pray to the authorities for justice," said the woman's son Rabindra Barik.
The Odisha Human Rights Commission has asked for an explanation from the railway police and the Balasore district authorities.
Over the past two days, Odisha has been shamed by the images of a man in Kalahandi, Dana Majhi, being forced to walk with his wife's body, his weeping daughter by his side, for six hours, because he could not afford an ambulance.
Two government schemes in Odisha are meant to provide a hearse to families and help them with the funeral.
"It is extremely distressing, we will take strict action," chief minister Naveen Patnaik said on Majhi's story.