Mumbai: The family of Rajesh Maru, who was pulled into an MRI machine at city’s Nair hospital, is still struggling to retrieve his lost finger. Maru died after the freak mishap but his right hand’s finger remained stuck in the machine. It was subsequently removed and kept at the hospital’s laboratory for two days before being sent to the forensic lab at Kalina.
The family, which is still in mourning, was unaware of the whereabouts of the finger. However, it recently learnt that the finger is lying ‘unclaimed’ in city’s forensic laboratory. Thirty-two year old Maru, a garment merchant at Lalbaug, who died in January this year, had visited Nair hospital to call on a relative who was to undergo an MRI scan. Maru was with the relative when they entered the MRI room; as soon as they did so, the magnetic field pulled him in along with an oxygen cylinder he was holding.
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While speaking with the Free Press Journal, the family members of Maru accused the police and the hospital management of keeping them in the dark. “Be it the police or the hospital authorities, none of them informed us of the finger. We were informed of the whereabouts of the finger, which is yet to be disposed as per the rituals,” Harish Solanki, brother-in-law of Maru, said. “We kept asking the police but we were told to wait until the investigation gets over and no one got back to us. Thus, we had no information of the finger,” Solanki added. Though the forensic report submitted to the police, months back, confirmed that the finger belonged to Maru, but the sample (finger) has not been handed over to the family.
Confirming the development, Dr Krishna Kulkarni, director of the laboratory said, “We had received the finger for DNA analysis, so that we can confirm whether it belonged to Maru. Within a month the DNA reports were submitted but no one came forward to claim the sample. It is kept in our laboratory and once we get the official letter, we would hand it over to the family.” Even more baffling was the response of the Agripada police officers, who had no inkling about the finger. “It must have been used for the analysis. I do not think, anything is left of it. I will have to check,” Savalaram Agavane, Senior Police Inspector, Agripada police, said.