HYDERABAD: An accidental swap of two bodies at the Osmania General Hospital morgue caused flutter on Thursday.

The incident occurred when a worker of the morgue mistook the body of an accident victim Venugopal Reddy for that of M. Kameswara Rao, killed in an encounter the previous day by the Cyberabad police.

It was only when the Hayatnagar police managed to intercept Reddy's relatives who were already on their way to the graveyard with Rao's body for performing the last rites, did everyone heave a sigh of relief.

Both the dead men were said to be more or less of same age and height which led to the confusion. A special police party shot dead Rao, when he reportedly tried to escape from their custody around 6 a.m. on Wednesday, while being brought from Gannavaram in connection with a kidnap case.

Later in the night, Venugopal Reddy, a businessman, died when an unidentified vehicle hit his scooter near Peddamber crossroads. Both bodies were shifted to OGH mortuary Wednesday night.

Legal formalities

Autopsy could not be conducted on Rao's body since legal formalities were not completed. In the businessman's case too, it was postponed by a day due to non-availability of forensic doctors. Soon after post-mortem, the bodies were kept side by side. Coincidentally, relatives of the two victims brought identical matador vans to take the bodies, and as is the practice, workers covered the bodies from head to toe in a white cloth after autopsy.

A mortuary worker, by mistake, shifted Rao's body into a van brought by the businessman's relatives. The blunder came to light when Rao's father removed the cloth to have a glimpse of his son's face. Shocked on seeing a different face, he alerted the police personnel nearby. Taken aback, the policemen frantically searched for Rao's body in the whole morgue. Not finding his body there, the police realised their folly and flashed messages across wireless sets and also rushed a team to stop Reddy's family from cremating the body. They managed to contact them over mobile phone after which the body was brought back to the mortuary and handed over to an equally shocked Rao's family members.

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