Hospital workers in the Balasore district of Odisha on Thursday broke a dead woman’s body at the hip and carried it in a sling because of the lack of an ambulance in the area, The Indian Express reported on Friday. The woman, an 80-year-old, was killed after being run over by a goods train near the Soro railway station in the district.

Officials said that her body was taken to the Soro Community Health Centre almost 12 hours after the Government Railway Police was notified of her death. Soro GRP Assistant Sub-Inspector PR Mishra said no ambulance was available to transport her body for a post-mortem to the Balasore district hospital, around 30 kilometres away. Mishra said he had asked an auto-rickshaw driver to transport the body to the railway station so that it could be taken by train, “but the auto-driver asked for Rs 3,500” and the GRP was only sanctioned Rs 1,000 “for such purposes”. “I had no other option but to ask some Grade IV workers of the Soho CHC to carry it,” he added.

The woman’s son said he was shocked at the incident and had considered filing a case in the matter. “But who would act on our complaint,” he said. Odisha Human Rights Commission chairperson BK Mishra issued notices to the Inspector-General of the GRP and the Balasore District Collector, asking them to order a probe and submit its report in four weeks. The incident was reported a day after a man in Kalahandi district of the state was forced to carry his wife’s body for at least 10 kilometres as he was denied an ambulance by the district hospital. Odisha has an existing scheme under which government hospitals are supposed to transport bodies to their homes free of cost.