Kolkata:
Richa Dutta's parents identified her body from scraps of her pink churidar found hours after the fire at Stephen court finally died. Its damage visible everywhere - in the charred top stories of the six-floor landmark in Kolkata, in the exposed wires that draped the soot-blackened walls, in the 24 bodies that were recovered, nearly 17 of them lying near the exit to the roof that had been blocked.
Richa's parents watched as their daughter was tagged - Body No. 12.
But on Thursday, when they went to collect the body, the tag read No. 2, and the family of another missing girl insisted this was their child.
A DNA test will be conducted to confirm who this lost girl belongs to. But that will take three weeks - more anguish inflicted upon families who want to mourn privately, without signing new forms and appearing for a haunting version of an identification parade.
Including Richa's, there are four bodies at the morgue of the city's SSKM Hospital which have multiple claimants. Families jostle, weep and shout their anger and pain.
A female corpse is Tapati Chakraborty, or Ruhi Parveen, depending on which relatives you speak to.
It is so tough to do this. Tapati was 40 years old. Her family identified her and was the first claimant, but dental records suggest this is a younger woman...perhaps Parveen, who was 21 years old," says Pradeep Mitra, a director at the hospital.
Around him, families stare at each other, knowing they will have to wait several days for a verdict. It is adding insult, their eyes suggest, to heartbreaking injury.