MARGAO
But all his efforts have been in vain. Subhash Udayvar, along with his son Anupam and daughter Sarita, have now decided to wait for two more days for the police and hospital authorities to take a call on his plea to hand over his wife s body, before knocking the doors of the Prime Minister, Narendra Modi via Twitter. “I and my son and daughter will stay in Goa for two more days and wait for the authorities to act before we go back home. I will go back to Mumbai and scan all the copies and send them to the Prime Minister. If Modi does act, it will be fine, if he also does not do so, God bless this country. I will never take birth in this land. I have never found insensitive and inhuman people who are not handing over a man s wife dead body to perform the last rites,” Subhash, a former army man and in-charge of Field Investigation and Fraud Prevention, Air India, told the media on Thursday. In this interesting case, his wife Suchitra and son Anupam had come to Margao on January 10 last for a holiday. Since Suchitra, aged 63 years, suddenly fell ill at a city hotel after gasping for breath, she was rushed to Hospicio in an 108 ambulance, where she was declared dead on arrival. Her son Anupam told the media that he did not inform the sad demise of his mother to his father Subhash fearing that his health may take a turn for the worse. Instead, he communicated the mother s death to his sister Sarita, who was in the USA. “Both of us decided not to inform our father about the mother s death till Sarita comes down home as we were really afraid of our father who is suffering from a heart ailment,” Anupam said. Subhash, however, learnt about his wife s death in the first week of April when he spotted a letter from a Margao-based funeral services coordinator asking his son to take possession of the body preserved for the last three months at the TB mortuary, Margao. “Shocked by the contents of the letter, I immediately called up Margao police and told them not to hand over Suchitra s body till he comes down to Goa. After my inquiries revealed that my wife died due to breathlessness, I requested the police and Hospicio medical superintendent Dr Ira Almeida to hand over to me the body, but they have refused to do so till date,” he said. He told the media that he must have made at least 25 trips to Margao police station from April 19 till date, hoping to get possession of his wife s mortal remains, but in vain. Subhash also knocked the doors of the district Collector, Dr Sachin Shinde, after a local court maintained that it has no jurisdiction over the matter. “The Collector was not even ready to hear me properly. He gave me just a minute to explain my situation and another minute and half for my son and daughter,” he said, while saying that he will have no option than to go back home leaving his wife s body in Goa.
