"What is the country doing? We do not respect the living nor do we respect the dead. Ours was a great civilisation. We have lost our civility," a bench of justices Badar Durrez Ahmed and Siddharth Mridul observed after it was informed that in some mortuaries lacking cold storage facility, bodies are stored in steel boxes.
The court directed Delhi government as well as the three municipal corporations and New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC) to file an affidavit indicating whether hospitals under their control are complying with the central government's advisory on management of mortuaries there.
The bench also directed Delhi government to file an affidavit with respect to the aspect of medical facilities available to prisoners - undertrials and convicts -indicating "whether proper medical facilities have been provided and whether norms are there for the same".