Mumbai: Around 31% of deceased bodies found within the premises of the Mumbai suburban Railways in the past decade remain unidentified and unclaimed, according to the Government Railway Police (GRP).
Responding to a Right To Information (RTI) query filed by Dr Sarosh Mehta, a railways activist, the GRP said that from 2014 to 2024, 18,836 people died on the Central Railways (CR) and 25,846 on the Western Railways (WR). From these, 5,524 on the CR and 8,416 on WR remained unidentified. These numbers add up to over 13,940 unidentified bodies among 44,682 deceased.
GRP data says that on an average at least seven people die on the railway premises everyday. GRP officers said that when they find a dead body on the railway premises, they search the deceased to trace their relatives through identity cards, bank cards, or contacts in their phones.
In the case of an unidentified person, the police circulate a photograph of the deceased across police stations in the state, and police headquarters of other states through their respective director general of police. The photo is also telecasted on Doordarshan in the hope of locating relatives or tracing the next of kin.
GRP officials said that the bodies are kept in the morgue and if they remain unclaimed after 10 days, the finger prints, hair samples, and nails are taken to preserve the identity of the deceased through their DNA. “It is a challenge to trace the relatives of a drug addict, a beggar, or a mentally challenged person as no document is found on them,” said a police officer from the GRP.
Following a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) in the Bombay high court by Sameer Zaveri, a railway activist, the court asked the western and central railways in January 2011 to create websites where they could post details about accident victims. The then GRP commissioner had begun the website http://shodh.gov.in in July 2012 to identify the accident victims, but Mehta said the website hardly made a difference.
Mehta said that without help from the GRP or the railways, relatives would sometimes spend multiple days travelling to hospitals and morgues across the city to find their injured or deceased kin. To solve this problem, Mehta said, “We just want a desk at a railway station where volunteers can sit with photos of the bodies and direct the relatives to the exact location where their dear one was taken after an accident.”