Infant's body found lying in box for six days at morgue in Madhya Pradesh

In a shocking incident, the dead boy of a toddler was found lying in a cardboard box at the morgue of the Maharaja Yashwantrao Hospital in Madhya Pradesh's Indore district. The autopsy was ordered only after a photograph of the body in a box went viral on social media.

Indore: After the recent discovery of a decomposed body lying neglected on a stretcher, another corpse, that of a five-month-old boy, was found lying in a cardboard box at the same government-run hospital here.

The box containing the body of the infant -- who had been found abandoned by the roadside in April -- allegedly lay in the freezer at the morgue of the Maharaja Yashwantrao Hospital (MYH) for six days without an autopsy, police said.

The autopsy was ordered only after a photograph of the body in a box went viral on social media.

"The post-mortem of the infant's body has been done. We have issued a show-cause notice to the head of the pediatric department and two other staff members for the delay in conducting the autopsy and sought their replies," hospital superintendent K Panchoniya told media on Friday.

Rajiv Tripathi, in-charge of Sanyogitaganj police station, said that the boy died at the hospital during treatment on September 11.

But the authorities informed the police officials posted at the hospital about the death on Thursday, he said, adding that last rites for the child will be performed with the help of municipal workers.

The boy was found next to a pile of wood in Alirajpur town, about 200 km from here, when he was just one day old but nobody came forward to claim him, said local Superintendent of Police (SP) Vipul Shrivastava.

"Even the umbilical cord had not been cut. As his condition was not good, he was shifted to Indore for treatment," the SP said.

Earlier, the decaying body of a man, reduced to a skeleton, had been found on a stretcher in the hospital's mortuary, causing outrage when its photos went viral.

The hospital earlier this week had formed a three-member panel to conduct an inquiry into alleged negligence of the staff.

(PTI Report)