Dozens of people have lost their lives in the landslide in Wayanad.
Wayanad: The massive landslide in Kerala’s Wayanad district has caused such devastation that even the doctors conducting the postmortems of the bodies have shuddered. A doctor posted for postmortems in the local hospital, while giving a heart-wrenching description of the tragedy, said that this was a scene in front of us that I will hardly ever forget in life. She said with a choked voice, ‘I have become accustomed to doing postmortems, but here was such (scene) that cannot even be imagined.’
‘I have never seen anything like this before’
Talking about the postmortem of a body, the doctor said, “The body was so badly crushed that I could not muster courage to look at it again. I had never seen anything like it before.” She said that this devastation has shaken her to the core. The doctor, who has years of experience in this field, expressed reluctance to reveal her identity. She said, “I have seen many bodies in my career but this (body) was different. The impact (of the landslide) was so severe that it seemed as if the person had been crushed to pieces.”
‘The second body was that of a one-year-old child’
Most of the bodies brought to the hospital were badly mutilated. The doctor said, ‘When I saw the first body, I told myself that I cannot do this. It was badly crushed and the second body was of a one-year-old child. I realised I will not be able to do it (postmortem) and I wanted to run away from there to some hospital where we can take care of the survivors. But I had no choice that day and we did 18 postmortems.’
‘More than 93 postmortems were conducted on the first day’
As she and her fellow doctors struggled to handle the bodies that came in on the first day, many forensic doctors from different parts of the state started arriving to speed up the postmortem process. “There were eight tables for conducting postmortems and by evening we had so many forensic doctors that there was one such doctor surgeon on every table. By 07:30 pm, we had conducted 53 postmortems,” the woman doctor said. The team of forensic doctors continued their work till 11:30 pm on the first day of the disaster and completed the postmortem of more than 93 bodies.
‘It was very difficult for the doctors too’
Due to better management, there was no delay in completing the postmortem procedures. The doctor said, ‘The situation was extremely heartbreaking. We had never seen bodies in such a condition before. Even for the doctors who carried out this task, it was extremely difficult. The force of the landslide crushed people, breaking them into pieces. The doctors had to manage the body parts, sometimes only the internal organs of the victims. To identify the bodies, they took samples of these organs for DNA analysis.’ (Language)
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