MUMBAI: With Islamabad refusing to acknowledge terrorists who attacked Mumbai in November 2008 were Pakistani, the Mumbai police have decided to dispose of the bodies of the eight suspects shot dead by security forces during the attacks.
The bodies of the suspects have been preserved at the state-run JJ Hospital in Mumbai. Hundreds of thousands of rupees have already been spent preserving the bodies.
The Mumbai police had sent DNA samples of two of the dead suspects to Pakistan for identification, but as of Wednesday Islamabad has not responded.
A police official said authorities could not bury the bodies in accordance with Islamic tradition because Muslim leaders in the state have said they would not allow them to be buried in any Muslim graveyard saying anyone who kills innocent people is not Muslim.
The Muslims of Maharashtra also say the bodies cannot be buried in Muslim graveyards of neighboring states.
“Keeping in mind the strong opposition from the Muslim community, we would have no alternative but to cremate the bodies at an undisclosed place or dump them in the high seas,” he said.
The special public prosecutor in the Mumbai terror trial, Ujjwal Nikam, said there was no legal bar on the disposal of the bodies, and, concurring with Nikam’s view, a senior state Home Ministry official said it made no sense to keep the bodies for so long.
“The bodies have been examined by American and Israeli experts apart from Indian experts and DNA samples have been taken. It’s time the bodies of the killed terrorists were discarded,” he added.
