Another incident of using an earthmover to cremate a dead body of a Covid-19 patient surfaced in Andhra Pradesh, this time from Tirupati.
The deceased is an elderly man who succumbed on Sunday night. TDP leader Nara Lokesh tweeted the video, questioning if the YSRCP government expressing shock.
Tirupati municipal corporation officials said the JCB was used with the consent of family members as the man was about 180 kgs and the sanitary staff were exhausted moving his body to three places since morning.
“His heavy body with broad shoulders was not fitting in the electric furnace at Govindadhamam. As the body was being moved out, the men could not manage, and it fell down. As the covers came off, it was taken to SVIMS and later sent to the Harishchandra cremation ground. The JCB was basically used to dig a 14 feet pit as required for the burial of a Covid-19 body,” said P S Girisha, Tirupati municipal commissioner.
“The body had become very difficult for the 5-6 men to lift. We should have hired 10-20 more men, but the locals were gathering and protesting the Covid-19 cremation there. So, with the family’s consent we used the JCB for about two meters,” Girisha said.
Ten days ago, the body of a Covid-19 positive man was taken for cremation in an earthmover in Palasa of Srikakulam.
The district collector had suspended the town’s municipal commissioner and local sanitary inspector “for acting in haste.” In another such incident around the same time in the same district, a Covid-19 woman’s body was transported in a tractor in Sompeta.
Meanwhile, Andhra Pradesh has on Monday recorded its highest single-day addition of 1322 new cases, taking the total to 20,019.