Wednesday, October 22, 2014

Tales of unidentified bodies:Daily Sun

  Dead bodies are found in canals, beels and rivers. Bodies are also seen beside railline, in the jungle, There is no dearth of bodies by the side of roads and in residential buildings. But the only thing missing is the name and identify of the deceased. About 1500 dead bodies marked as ‘unidentified’ are being buried, laid to rest in the capital alone every year. That means about four in a day an
d 125 in a month on an average. Failing to get the identify and find any relative, police are filing cases on their own as complainant. After investigation ‘only in name’ the case also is going missing. In this way, many allegation regarding ‘missing’ are being filed everyday across the country. The consequences are also the same. Although solution is found in some cases due to the initiatives of the families, in most cases the missing man remains untraced. In the opinion of crime analysts, if coordinated initiatives are made stepping up the police efforts links of unidentified bodies and missing allegations can be found. In this field, criminals are taking advantage of slack police action. As the bodies are unidentified, the mystery of over one thousand killings are remaining unearthed every year. National Human Right commission chairman Dr Mizanur Rahman said the law enforcers in no way can shrug off the responsibility of unidentified bodies. Their duty is to bring the perpetrators to justice by identifying the unidentified and find out the killers through investigation. Same is the responsibility of police as regards the missing people. But their failure in this task is giving advantage to the miscreants. Police officials said they have to discharge many duties which start from recovery of the body and ends in the burial. Besides, the investigation continues. Headway in the investigation cannot be made for lack of information. Report on the investigation has to be submitted within the deadline. Police officials have limitation in knowing the particulars of the unidentified bodies. Police achieved poor success in this job for inadequate manpower and technological supports. Despite this limitation, police have succeeded in identifying the clue of model girl Tinni murder and some other cases. Many police officials spoke on the need for constituting a separate wing to deal with unidentified bodies. Currently, police men cannot concentrate on the matter as they are overwhelmed with other important routine and emergency works. Masudur Rahman, deputy commissioner (media) of DMP, said particulars of the unidentified bodies cannot be known in most cases. It becomes almost impossible to identify the murders in absence of particulars of the deceased persons. Every unidentified body goes through autopsy and viscera tests. Around 80 percent of the deceased are found to be murdered. Police preserve the photographs of the bodies. Though the images the distorted bodies cannot be published in the newspapers, those are posted on the websites of the police. The affected family members can identify the bodies from police website. If identity of any victim is found, police take necessary step. If any victim is found to be killed, a murder case is filed by police. Later, photograph of the victim is sent to be kept in CID gazette. A body is buried in case the deceased is not killed. The police high-up further said if the fingerprint of the dead person and forensic documents are verified with those of the NID card, the problem may be solved. RAB additional director general (ADG) Col Ziaul Ahsan said DNA sample, fingerprint and other clues are not collected properly to identify the body. There is no laboratory to preserve the above samples and conduct test. He said the missing persons and samples of the deceased persons should be compared by trained and experienced officials. The existing labs of police and RAB are not suitable for the job. According to Anjuman Mofidul Islam and police assigned to rescue dead body, every year on an average 1500 unidentified bodies are found in the capital and 1981 unidentified bodies were buried in 2009. Also 1204 bodies in 2010, 1192 bodies in 2011, 1247 bodies in 2012, and 1430 in 2013 unidentified bodies were buried. During the nine months of this year, 1000 unidentified dead bodies were buried, an official of Anjuman Mofidul Islam informed. Sources concerned said, after rescuing unidentified body an unnatural death (UD) case is lodged at police station. After completion of post-mortem, it is sent to Anjuman Mofidul Islam for burial. After completion of formalities, the dead body is buried at the Azimpur or Jurain graveyard. Most of the dead bodies are rescued from Dhaka and its adjoining areas. Besides Dhaka, Anjuman Mofidulm Islam also helps to bury dead bodies in different places of Chittagong. But police said that most of the unidentified bodies are victims of killing. On many occasions, the dead bodies are dumped in other silent spots after committing murder. Most of the times, the faces of dead bodies are changed for which identification becomes tough. After recovering from various places, dead bodies are sent to Dhaka Medical College Hospital and Mitford Hospital for autopsy. And after the post-mortem the bodies are preserved in hospital morgues for several days. Even after that if identification of any body is not found then the body is sent for burial. The photography section of detective police preserves the photo of body. But it becomes very tough to identify the body with the photograph of police. That is why the incidents of identification rarely take place. In 2002, a body of a woman was recovered under the Buriganga Bridge. She was later buried as an unidentified. Later that body was identified as model daughter Syeda Tania Mahbub Tinni. But such incident hardly occurs. To identify her, more eight bodies had been exhumed. The reason was that the graves were not identified. It is not possible to keep one grave separate from the other one due to shortage of place. The people concerned said it needs to bury a body to a grave that is not very old one. The same situation also prevails in the hospital morgue as it would not be possible to keep a dead body for long time. In such a way, relatives of the dead persons face difficulty in identifying his nearest one. The relatives have to go to various places to get the photograph and information. Even after that the proper evidence is not found for lack of preservation. Most of the times, the investigation officer does not go for identification of the unidentified bodies after one or two months investigation. Because, police does not have any system by which they will keep the finger print record of the dead bodies. Crime analyst and Associate Professor of Dhaka University Hafizur Rahman said police cannot know about the consequences of the missing persons. Thus they are unable to inform anything to the relatives. So those who are buried as unidentified remained missing to the relatives. But the situation has to be overcome. He said general diary (GD) is filed with any police station if anyone reported missing. But the identification of body is not checked with the missing concerned. The government can form separate units of police and detectives in resolving the incidents quickly.

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