Tamil Nadu Man's Body Mistaken For North Indian Worker's, Sent To Bihar

The body of a Tamil Nadu agricultural labourer in his sixties was mistaken for the corpse of a worker from Bihar, and it was sent to the northern state in an ambulance by a state-run hospital in nearby Tiruvallur.

When the family of the Tamil farm worker came to the Tiruvallur hospital to take home the body, they were shown a corpse of some other person, which shocked them, and they staged a protest.

Subsequently, Tiruvallur Government Medical College Hospital officials discovered that the Tamil agricultural labourer's body had been sent to Bihar by mistake.

Also, the Tamil labourer was identified as Rajendran from a village near Tiruttani in Tiruvallur district.

Officials, after discovering the truth, immediately alerted the ambulance driver and directed him to return.

However, by that time, the vehicle had gone about 800 km away from Tiruvallur.

The corpse that the mortuary staff showed to the Tamil farm labourer family was identified as that of a worker, Manoj Manchi (55), from Bihar, who had come last month to Tamil Nadu in search of work.

Rajendran died following an attempt to end his life, and Manchi passed away following an illness. While Rajendran's body arrived in Tiruvallur district on Thursday, Manchi's body was sent to Bihar after a relative claimed it.

A top official of the government hospital told PTI that she had sent a report to senior officials on the incident and that she could not disclose anything more. A senior district official said an inquiry was on and all appropriate steps were being taken to fix accountability and prevent recurrence.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)