AMBALA: Recently, the Northern Railways (NR) had increased the expense of cremating the unclaimed dead bodies from Rs 1,000 to Rs 5,000. The responsibility of cremating unclaimed bodies found on rail tracks is on the government railway police (GRP).It is worth mentioning that if any dead body is found on the railway premises due to an accident with a train or in case if the body is not identified or claimed, it is the responsibility of GRP to conduct the post-mortem and cremation of the unclaimed bodies. The GRP is also responsible for picking up the dead body, taking photographs, purchasing shrouds, taking the body to the hospital for post-mortem and lastly cremating it. The GRP was earlier given up to Rs 1,000 to conduct these processes and now the NR has increased the expenses to up to Rs 5,000.In 2017, nearly 2,021 dead bodies were found in Haryana railway premises out of which 1,319 were identified and the GRP had to look after 702 unclaimed dead bodies for cremating them.Senior Divisional Commercial Manager, Praveen Gaur Dwivedi said, "The GRP is not submitting the bills on the expenses incurred on cremation and they are only giving a letter stating the amount spent on cremating bodies, which is not justifiable. The GRP has to submit a proper bill of the expense to get the amount of up to Rs 5000. These charges have been increased as per standard operating procedures of the NR."Dheeraj Kumar Setia, Superintendent of Police (Railways), Haryana, Ambala Cantonment said, "We have five divisions of northern railway attached to Haryana state including Bikaner , Jaipur, East Delhi , West Delhi, and Ambala. We are facing this problem in Ambala division only and the payments in other divisions are released without submitting any bills. We are already providing the details of the concerned persons who are deployed for the job of cremating the unclaimed bodies. These local people are being motivated by us to do this job and they are being paid for their services. We will solve this problem very soon."

Stay updated with all the Latest Gurgaon headlines here. For more exclusive & live news updates from all around India, stay connected with NYOOOZ.