A day after massive landslides wreaked havoc in the Mundakkai and Chooralmala regions of Kerala’s Wayanad district, hospitals are under pressure to conduct consecutive post-mortems of the recovered corpses, to comply with insurance regulations. Over 200 bodies have been recovered so far, and the death toll is estimated to go further up, with over 200 missing persons remaining untraced. Health centres in Wayanad and the adjoining Malappuram district are overflowing with bodies, many of them dismembered and bloated, brought in for identification.
Data from hospitals in Wayanad and Malappuram — where many bodies were washed up through the Chaliyar river — records 128 deaths so far, out of which post-mortem has already been completed for 123 bodies. Post-mortem has also been done for 29 out of the 30 body parts.
The urgency in conducting post-mortems is also to comply with insurance requirements. In case of an accidental or unnatural death, most insurance policies mandate the production of an autopsy report to confirm the cause of death. Only then can the deceased person’s nominees access the sum insured. During tragedies like the landslides in Wayanad, families of the deceased, who are already displaced and thrust into a financial drain, often find it hard to claim insurance in the absence of a post-mortem report. This, in turn, exerts pressure on healthcare workers and doctors to wrap up post-mortems, often at a rapid speed.
Many of the affected families, meanwhile, have been seeking the release of insurance compensation without a postmortem report, considering several bodies are yet to be recovered and many of those recovered remain unidentifiable.
According to the witnesses, three landslides occurred in the region at 1.30 am, 2 am, and 3 am early on July 30. Adverse weather conditions and hundreds being entrapped in inaccessible regions have made the rescue efforts difficult.