Valsad cops asked to find kin of unclaimed Covid victims

SURAT: On April 18, when Vijay Patil succumbed to Covid-19 at Valsad Civil Hospital, the administration could not reach out to his family members immediately for his final rites and so tasked cops to find his family members for cremation.
However, when cops reached the address Patil had provided at the time of admission, the thatched house near Valsad city police station was found empty. Patil, a ragpicker used to live alone.With nobody to claim the body, police donned its humanitarian uniform and took up the task of giving the body a dignified send off it deserved. Valsad cops who have been tasked with finding kin of Covid dead, cremated Patil with all Covid protocols in place.
While police are able to find family members in some of the cases, it doesn’t hesitate to take the responsibility of bodies without any relations and cremate them. Like Patil, even Niranjan Desai, a confirmed bachelor who lived in Hanuman Bhagda area, too found a family at last in the khaki uniform.
“There was one more case wherein a married man from Udwada had died. But his wife too had contracted the virus and was in quarantine, so we cremated him,” said V D Mori, inspector of Valsad city police station, adding that they have to find the relatives if they are absent or unreachable.
Mori said that so far, they were asked to find relatives of four victims. Vapi police was also informed to reach out to family members of Sukhiya Kheda.