Nishtar Medical University’s (NMU) Head of Anatomy Department, Dr Mariam Ashraf, appeared on Geo News’s programme Ajj Shahzeb Khanzadan Kay Saath on Friday night in which she said that the facility does not keep bodies only for research purposes but also has to keep corpses for safekeeping that are given by rescue and police officials.
In the show she also claimed that there were only 4 bodies on the rooftop. However, the videos that are circulating on social media show a large number of bodies piled up in a semi enclosed space on the roof.
“Edhi Foundation has not been picking up bodies from our hospital since they do not have burial space in their graveyard,” she said.
“The only reason for keeping bodies on the roof is that their influx is huge and they aren’t being returned back to police stations in the numbers that they should,” she said.
According to Ashraf, the bodies that the police give to the hospital are kept in the morgue for a month and then sent back to the police for burial if no one comes forward to claim them.
“Usually, the abandoned bodies that we receive have already decayed to an increased extent. We follow all our SOPs, we do not refuse to take decayed bodies as well.”
