LAHORE: Lahore police on Tuesday announced that 279 unclaimed human bodies were found in the city during 2020, forcing them to devise a new mechanism for probing the cause of deaths of these people, ARY NEWS reported.
According to the fresh mechanism, from now on the city’s investigation department would look into the matter of the unclaimed dead bodies rather than the operations wing.
“Last year both the investigations and operations wings led by their respective DIGs looked into the matter.” the police said adding that however, after the new protocol, the bodies would now be handed over to the investigation wing for further probe into the matter.
They said that a renewed DNA tests would be conducted on these bodies to ascertain the cause of their deaths and identities.
“Bodies that did not undergo post-mortem previously will now go through the process,” the Lahore police said adding that in case of any unnatural cause of death, the matter would then be handed over to the authorities for a further probe.
A case would be registered in this regard and would be proceeded under murder charges.
In December 2020, the Lahore High Court (LHC) heard a case related to the burial of unclaimed dead bodies without carrying out its identification and the petitioner in the case stated that the burial of such bodies without identification is a violation of basic human rights.
The petitioner said that the relatives of such persons kept searching for the loved ones besides facing legal complications due to the burial of the unclaimed dead bodies without maintaining any records.
During the hearing, Punjab’s assistant advocate general told the LHC judge that the government has constituted a committee for the registration of unclaimed bodies and its meeting will be held today to finalise the recommendations.
