Haryana needs to check bodies in Bawana canal: Delhi cops

New Delhi Unidentified corpses, some so highly decomposed that they were reduced to skeletons, floating in Bawana canal from the upstream states have become a “huge headache” for Delhi Police.

The canal flows into the city through Haryana and it is the primary source for the Haiderpur treatment plant that supplies drinking water to Delhi.

“This year, 22 bodies have been fished out from the Bawana canal. Of them, only two could be identified. These belonged to persons from border areas in Delhi. More than 90 per cent of the bodies flow in from Haryana,” a police officer said.

“Most of the corpses have been in water for so long that these were reduced to skeletons. In such cases, identification is impossible,” the officer said.

DCP (Outer) B S Jaiswal said: “The human body begins to bloat in water and decomposes within hours of death. Imagine the level of decomposition that would happen to a corpse floating in the canal for 10 days.”

“When you fish out such highly-decomposed corpses, it becomes a humongous task to ascertain the cause of death...whether it was murder or accident. The injury marks and other preliminary indicators are all gone,” he said.

The Delhi Police has blamed its Haryana counterpart for letting the bodies float in the canal. At an inter-state coordination meeting on July 27, it suggested that Haryana should put grills or nets in each of its districts through which the canal passes.

“The bodies would get caught in the grills. This way, a lot of bodies can be taken out of water at a much earlier stage and identified,” a police officer said.

“Sometimes relatives of missing persons call us from as far as Panipat and Karnal. They ask us to perform DNA tests on corpses retrieved from the canal. They suspect that one of the bodies might turn out to be a lost relative” the officer said.

Sources said the three police stations in Delhi-Bawana, Shahbad Dairy and KN Katju Marg have their task cut out until Haryana makes arrangements to check the rising number of corpses floating in the canal.

“The Haryana Police promised to take action every time we discussed the matter. In reality, nothing has been done. Since Haryana is an upstream state, it can let the unidentified bodies pass through their territory so that these land in our area of jurisdiction. These become our headache then,” a Delhi Police officer alleged.

Before entering Delhi, the canal passes through Haryana’s Sonepat district. “It is not right to say that bodies are dumped only in Haryana. They float from Punjab and Himachal Pradesh. Since there is no grill in the canal, it is hard to guess how many bodies are dumped into it,” Superintendent of Police, (Rohtak Range) Arun Singh said.

Monday 13 August 2012

http://www.expressindia.com/latest-news/haryana-needs-to-check-bodies-in-bawana-canal-delhi-cops/987519/

52 killed and 46 injured in horror Indian crash as bus plunges 300ft into gorge after tyre bursts

At least 52 people have died after a crowded bus plunged more than 100m into a deep gorge in northern India, police said.

The driver lost control of the vehicle, which was carrying passengers on its roof, at a sharp bend on a mountain road in the state of Himachal Pradesh, 385 miles north of New Delhi, said police officer Raj Kumar. The bus then fell into a gorge.

The driver lost control when a tyre burst at a sharp bend on a mountain road in the state of Himachal Pradesh, 335 miles north of New Delhi.

Many passengers riding on the roof of the 42-seat bus were killed in the carnage. Among the victims were 18 women.

Forty-six other people injured in the accident were taken to hospital, three of whom were in a critical condition.

The bus had seats for 60 people and was so overcrowded that some people were riding on its roof. Kumar said the rescue operation was continuing and that the death toll of 52 could rise.

Tragedy struck at 9am local time as the privately-owned bus travelled from Chamba - a remote mountainous district where there are many road accidents - to Dulera.

Sunil Chaudhury, administrator of Himachal Pradesh’s Chamba district, said all victims’ bodies had been recovered but the relief and rescue operation was going on.

Four teams of doctors were working at the crash site and postmortems were being conducted at the scene.

Police figures show India has the world's highest road-death toll, with more than 110,000 people dying each year in accidents commonly caused by overcrowding, speeding and poor vehicle and road maintenance.

Monday 13 august 2012

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/aug/11/india-bus-crash?newsfeed=true

Hospitals struggle to cope as earthquakes kill 306 in Iran

Overcrowded hospitals in north-west Iran struggled to cope with thousands of earthquake victims yesterday as rescuers raced to reach remote villages after two powerful quakes killed at least 306 people.

There were long queues of survivors waiting to be treated after Saturday's 6.4 and 6.3 quakes near Tabriz and Ahar, Iranian media reported.

Aidin, a Tabriz resident, said he went to give blood at a local hospital on Saturday and saw staff struggling to cope with the influx of patients.

Heath Minister Marzieh Vahid Dastjerdi told a session of parliament today that the number jumped by about 50 after victims died in hospital. More than 3,000 people were injured in the earthquakes.

Casualty figures are expected to rise, as some of the injured were in a critical condition while hundreds were trapped under rubble. Many villages are hard to reach by road, which has also hindered rescue efforts.

Scores of aftershocks have hit Iran's mountainous north-east since the 6.4 and 6.3 magnitude quakes hit the region, where some 300,000 people live near the borders with Azerbaijan and Armenia.

Thousands of people have moved into makeshift camps or slept in streets after the quakes, in fear of more aftershocks, which numbered 55 by last night. "I saw some people whose home was destroyed, and all of their livestock killed," said Tahir Sadati, a local photographer. "People need help, they need warm clothes, more tents, blankets and bread."

The most casualties were in the villages near Ahar, Varzaghan and Harees, close to the city of Tabriz, Iranian media reported.

Iran is located on seismic fault lines and is prone to earthquakes.

In 2003, some 26,000 people were killed by a 6.6 magnitude quake that flattened the historic south-eastern city of Bam.

Monday 13 august 2012

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/hospitals-struggle-to-cope-as-earthquakes-kill-250-in-iran-8037172.html