GRP vows to streamline body claiming process

With Railways becoming synonymous with accidents and deaths, the bodies of the unfortunate victims are not getting identified and therefore failing to get respectable final rites. The top brass of Maharashtra Government Railway Police (GRP), have chalked out an ambitious initiative to end this malaise.

To make it feasible for relatives of the dead to claim the bodies, the state police will soon flag off a special drive and provide vital inputs to close kin to help them identify the deceased. The officials revealed that almost 40 per cent of the deceased fail to get identified due to the severity of the accident.

GRP officials stated that several people die untimely death in railway accidents, the major reasons being getting hit by a pole, electrocution, falling down from a moving train etc. Raj Khilnani, Additional Director General of Police (Railways) said, " There has been a slight improvement in the number of bodies getting claimed, however, we want to further raise the bar and hence would start a special drive to help the kin of the deceased."

The officials claimed that they would make a detailed record of information of those who have died in an accident. The record will include details of the physical description, luggage, any other belongings found, and identification marks of the deceased. In case the face is not distorted, the face will be photographed for further reference.

The officials revealed that similar details were collected on smaller scale earlier, but the uniqueness of this drive will be that the above mentioned points would be penned down as official record which will help the police streamline the earlier vague process.