In what appeared to be a rerun of the infamous Dana Majhi incident that shocked the world and embarrassed the Naveen Patnaik government two years ago, a man in Odisha’s Gajapati district was found carrying the body of his minor daughter, killed by Cyclone ‘Titli’, on his shoulders for about 8 km to conduct post-mortem.
The body of Mukund Dora’s eight-year old daughter, reported missing since October 11, was traced near a nullah on Wednesday, but no effort was made to shift the body to the hospital for post-mortem. Told that he would not get the compensation package of Rs. 10 lakh announced by Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik for each victim of ‘Titli’ without post-mortem, a worried Mukund decided to carry the body to the hospital in Kainpur on his shoulders.
As in the Dana Majhi case, he was spotted by some media persons, who alerted the administration about it. Majhi, a poor tribal from Kalahandi district, was forced to carry the body of his wife on his shoulders for 10 km after being denied a hearse vehicle by authorities at the district headquarters hospital in Bhawanipatna.
“Police officials arrived yesterday but took no steps to take the body to the hospital. They just came, did some paperwork and went back. When no one came even this morning, I decided to carry the body on my shoulders,” a distraught Mukund told the reporter of leading Odia TV channel, OTV.
On its part, the police cited the inaccessibility of the area to explain away its failure to shift the body on Wednesday. “There are no roads to the place, not even a pedestrian road. One has to take through crop fields to reach there. There is no way a vehicle could reach the place. That’s why we could not shift the body yesterday. But we did the inquest. When we got word about Mukund carrying his daughter’s body today, we immediately requisitioned an auto rickshaw, took the body first to Kainpur and then Paralakhemundi for post-mortem,” said Paralakhemundi sub divisional police officer (SDPO).
The incident has predictably led to outrage in the state. “The state government is just not bothered. It is concerned only about patting itself on the back and not about people who perished in the disaster. The administration is conspicuous by its absence,” said Union Petroleum minister Dharmendra Pradhan, who toured the worst-hit areas of Gajapati district and saw for himself the devastation wrought by the cyclone.
Pradesh Congress Committee (PCC) chief Niranjan Patnaik was equally scathing in his criticism. “The state government has failed miserably in addressing the people’s miseries. It’s nearly a week since the cyclone struck. But till now, the government doesn’t even know how many people have been killed by the cyclone,” he said.
The incident in Gajapati is certain to embarrass the Naveen Patnaik government, which had stuck to ‘zero casualty’ till two days after the cyclone, and raise questions about its sincerity in providing succour to the people devastated by ‘Titli’.
