29 bodies from the Odisha train tragedy are still unaccounted for after two months
29 remains are still awaiting identification out of the 295 persons killed in the triple-train tragedy at Odisaha’s Bahanaga Bazar Railway station two months ago, an official said.
The remaining 266 corpses have been given to the family of the dead, while these remains continue to be kept in five containers at the AIIMS Bhubaneswar. According to Prof. Dilip Kumar Parida, superintendent of AIIMS Bhubaneswar, they received a total of 162 corpses from various hospitals and the accident site after the incident on June 2. Of those, 81 were handed over to the victims’ loved ones in the first phase.
Multiple claims and a few other obstacles prevented the initial identification of the other 81 remains, according to Parida. 52 further remains were given to their families on the basis of DNA test findings, while 29 bodies were still unidentified. According to the criteria, no one will get a body that does not match the DNA of the claimants, he added.
“The railroads, the federal and state governments, and these entities’ futures will be decided by them. No part is played by AIIMS Bhubaneswar. Its only purpose, according to Parida, is to maintain the corpses. The corpses of two fatalities, Dinesh Yadav (31) from Jharkhand and Suresh Ray (23) from Bihar, were incinerated on July 29 by the Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation after their relatives refused to accept the bodies.
After providing his DNA sample, Hardev Kumar’s cousin Kailash Kumar from the Jharkhand region’s Dumka district has been waiting for the identification of his brother’s remains. He hasn’t received any confirmation, however. “I’m hoping the last section of the DNA sample report will reveal the identity of my brother’s corpse. I’ll hold out till the very end,” stated Kailash Kumar.
A halted goods train, the Bengaluru-Howrah Superfast Express, and the Chennai-bound Coromandel Express from Shalimar collided with one other, resulting in 295 fatalities and nearly 1200 injuries.
