HC directive to Addn Govt Pleader on getting back body of man

Madras High Court today directed Additional Government Pleader Sanjay Gandhi to get instructions from the Tamil Nadu Government pertaining to a case where the body of a man killed in an accident in Saudi Arabia was to be brought back to India.
Justice V Dhanapalan before whom the petition filed by the man's widow came up, also directed the Additional Solicitor General of India to ascertain the status from the External Affairs Ministry by Friday.
The petitioner's case was her husband Kandaswawy Arumugam, an electrician in a company in Riyadh in Saudi Arabia since 2009, died in an accident there on Apr 11 2013.

After being informed of his death she was given post-mortem certificate. She wrote to the Indian Embassy in Saudi Arabia to arrange to send back her husband's remains, but there was no response.
She then contacted the Chennai-headquartered Protector of Emigrants under the Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs. She wrote to the consul-general of India in Jeddah and the Chief Minister's special cell. Except acknowledgments and 'empty assurances', she had not got any useful help from any of these authorities, the petitioner said.
As neither she nor his parents received the body even after 10 months, she moved the High Court.

Relying on Supreme Court rulings that the fundamental right to human dignity was not restricted to a living human alone, she said it was available even after death.
"The right to accord a decent burial or cremation of the dead body of a person should be taken to be part of the right to such human dignity," she said.
The court after hearing her, directed AGP Sanjay Gandhi to get instructions from the state pertaining to the case.