Hyderabad: Angry relatives of the dead in the Mahabubnagar bus accident clashed with security personnel and police posted at the Andhra Pradesh Forensic Science Laboratory at Red Hills here on Thursday, demanding that the charred remains of their loved ones be handed over to them immediately.
A few relatives threatened the police that they would commit suicide if the dead bodies were not handed over to them by Friday.
As there was confusion over the venue and theprocedure for enrolling and giving blood samples, utter chaos prevailed at the ISO-certified laboratory.
“We were not told to bring photos proving the relation with the deceased. After standing in queue for a long time, they are telling us about this,” Adnan, a relative of Farooq Ali, 24, one of the deceased, rued. He was fighting with the police as Farooq’s mother and father haven’t had anything to eat since Wednesday morning and are in no position to wait further.
Parents of Shravanti, a passenger whose name was not on the passengers’ list of Jabbar Travels, arrived at the forensic lab to give samples of their blood for analysis.
“We realised that our daughter actually took the ill-fated bus at the last minute as the one operated by SRS Travels that she was supposed to board was cancelled.” Shravanti had completed MSc in pharmacy and had been to Bangalore to attend an interview.
In an effort to pacify the crowd at the gates of the laboratory, Chandrashekar Reddy, the project director of the Mahabubnagar District Rural Development Authority who is coordinating efforts at the laboratory, announced that so far blood samples from relatives of 39 of the 42 deceased whose bodies are lying in the mortuary had been collected. He said that the bodies of Priyanka, Amar and Dinesh were handed over to their kin as they were identified with solid proof such as ornaments or clothing.
“The process of matching DNA generally takes three weeks. After the state government’s persuasion, the director of the lab promised that it will be completed within a week, for the bodies of the others who died in the tragedy,” Reddy said.
He added that the kin of the deceased would be informed about the DNA test results by phone. “We will transport the bodies to their native places without charging anything, including for the coffin,” he said.
Allaying fears that the bodies could decompose by that time, he said enough care had been taken to store them in freezers. Personal belongings of the deceased collected from the accident site were also kept for identification at Red Hills.
Relatives of the other deceased can contact 040-23307138 for giving samples for DNA test. Mahabubnagar district collector M Girija Shankar advised the relatives of the deceased to go to the Andhra Pradesh Forensic Science Laboratory with two passport size photographs of the deceased.
The collector said that the dead belonged to Karnataka, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh apart from Andhra Pradesh.
