Plea In Supreme Court Seeks Constitution Of Three Tier Committee For Disposal Of Bodies With Dignity
Aggrieved by the manner in which dead bodies of CoVID 19 infected persons are being disposed of by the concerned authorities of the State near the banks of different rivers, a plea has been filed in Supreme Court for constitution of a three tier committee to look after the disposal of bodies with dignity.
It has been argued that dead bodies of CoVID 19 affected persons are being buried on the banks of rivers. Due to strong winds, the sand covering the bodies blows away thereby exposing the decomposed bodies as a feast for predatory birds and dogs.
“The bodies on the river banks, taken together with funeral pyres burning round the clock and cremation grounds running out of space, tell the story of a death toll unseens and unacknowledged in official data. Pandemic has resulted in the infringement of various human rights which have been accorded protection in our Constitution like Right to employment, right to privacy, right to freedom of speech and expression, right to health, right to free movement etc. The fundamental human rights most affected are Right to Health and “Right to Life” which also includes ``Right to die with Dignity”, the plea states.
The plea preferred by Vineet Jindal and filed through Advocate on Record Raj Kishor Chaudhary states that hundreds of corpses have been found floating in the river or buried in the sand of its banks.
“Since the outbreak of CoVID 19, medical waste generation has increased globally which is a threat to public health and environment. For sample collection of the suspected covid 19 patients, diagnosis treatment of huge numbers of patients and disinfection purpose lots of infectious and biomedical wastes are generated from hospitals. In addition to dumping of the corpus of CoVID 19 is a major threat to the environment including mixing up of these wastes increases the risk of disease transmission through water and street animals”, the plea further states.
The petitioner avers that on the legal front, despite numerous legislations at State and Central level, civic bodies seem to be helpless to check dumping bodies into the river polluting the life existing under river and existing laws seems to be inadequate.
The plea also seeks for removal of dead bodies, fill up etc made so far to restore the ecology of river beds, declaring river bed of Ganga as ecologically sensitive. Further the petitioner has also prayed for directing that any environmental hazardous element/ work of dumping of corpus in the river shall permanently destroy the ecology of rivers, their ground water recharge ability and would be violative of public trust doctrine, precautionary principle which are part of Article 21 of the Constitution of India and for taking appropriate steps to avail pure and safe drinking water to the people living near those river banks thereby preventing them to not drink and use the contaminated water.
Along with this, the plea seeks for issuing a writ of mandamus directing the respondents to conduct door to door CoVID tests in areas where dead bodies have been found along the river banks of Ganges and other rivers, take steps for vaccinating the people living adjacent to the ghats through door to door vaccination drive and for taking strict actions against the persons or officials who charge money in the name of performing last rites at the crematoriums and graveyards.