Mumbai:
For ambulance driver Bhanukishan Dokre, 20-odd hours between Sunday and yesterday turned out to be the worst of his 18-year career.
Dokre, along with two railway coolies and a GRP official had to lug around the headless, decomposing body of a railway accident victim in his ambulance for nearly 20 hours as three civic hospitals refused to accept it.
At 2.30 pm on Sunday, an unidentified man, believed to be in his thirties, died while crossing the tracks near Thane's platform number 4. At 3 pm, Dokre was instructed by GRP officials to take the body to the Thane Civil Hospital and, if it refused to accept the body, go to other civic hospitals.
"I couldn't eat anything throughout the ordeal. It was the worst day of my career. The accident took place at 2.30 pm on Sunday and we had to run around with the body until 5.30 am yesterday. The body was finally accepted by a hospital at 11.30 am," said Dokre.
"Authorities at the Thane Civil Hospital told us that they had no place in the morgue for the body and handed it back to us after doing the panchnama. After that, we went to the Shivaji Hospital in Kalwa, where we were refused for a similar reason after a long wait. The same thing happened at Sion Hospital as well.
"All this while, the body was decomposing and a rotten smell had spread throughout the ambulance," added Dokre.
After being refused for the third time, Dokre decided to leave the body and the ambulance outside Thane station at 5.30 am yesterday and let the GRP take a call on what was to be done next. Senior GRP officials requested the Shivaji Hospital to accept the body and they finally did so at 11.30 am.
Ratnakar Kulkarni, civil surgeon, Shivaji Hospital, said, "We made out the panchnama and handed the body back to them as the morgue was filled to capacity. We accepted it as soon as we had some space in the morgue."
A M Jadhav, a senior railway police official from Thane, said, "We have spoken to senior officials at the hospitals to look into the issue and try and find a way to ensure such a thing doesn't happen again.
The victim has not been identified yet. We will have to wait seven days for someone to claim the body.
A Thane railway police official said seven accidents took place at the station on Sunday. Four of the accident victims, including the unidentified man, died while three are undergoing treatment.