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Unclaimed body lies in morgue for seven months

The family of 32-year-old Gurmukh Singh, hailing from Jaffarabad in Gurdaspur district in the northern Indian state of Punjab, had been running from pillar to post to trace him after he went missing in Dubai some months ago.

“We had been searching for Gurmukh all these months. We contacted people from our village living in Dubai but even they could not trace him,” Preetham Singh, brother of the deceased, told Khaleej Times over the telephone from Jaffarabad.

“The last time we heard from him was in the first week of July. He told us he was planning to return during the amnesty period announced by the UAE government as he was an illegal worker. We never heard from him afterwards,” said Preetham Singh.

“A few days ago, a volunteer of Valley of Love, a Dubai-based social organisation, visited us and showed us the photograph of his body,” he said.

“Soon after, we informed our friends in Dubai. They went and identified the body in the morgue,” he added.

According to Preetham Singh, his brother had paid Dh5,000 to a recruiting agent to get a visa to go to Dubai in 2003. He had been working in Dubai ever since as a welder and had visited home twice.

C. P. Mathew, a volunteer of Valley of Love, said, “We learnt about the body of an Indian lying in the morgue. With the help of the Indian consulate, we approached the police who handed over Gurmukh’s passport.”

“From the home address in passport, we managed to trace the family. We are now trying to repatriate the body with the help of the consulate,” he said.

According to the police report, the body of Gurmukh Singh was found in Muteena Park on July 31 last year. He had died of cardiac arrest.

A police source said, “We found other details about Gurmukh only after about five months of investigation. We were, in fact, processing the notification when the Indian consulate officials contacted us.”

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